


The Art of Scraping Through

by MadameReveuse



Series: Star Trek: Reclamation [1]
Category: Star Trek: Picard
Genre: Coping, Fix-It, Hugh | Third of Five Lives, M/M, Pining, Recovery, Synths and xBs coexisting, and many more! - Freeform, post-Season 1, xBs (Star Trek)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-15
Updated: 2020-08-04
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:21:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 75,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23659777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MadameReveuse/pseuds/MadameReveuse
Summary: Hugh survives Narissa's attempt on his life, and must now make a new home for the remaining xBs on Coppelius, while also attempting to cope with his own demons, old and new. The fact that he's become completely smitten with Elnor in the meantime does not help matters... or does it?
Relationships: Elnor/Hugh | Third of Five
Series: Star Trek: Reclamation [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1945795
Comments: 52
Kudos: 88





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Named, again, after a Hozier lyric.
> 
> I swear, nobody tells Elnor stuff on this show. "What if Hugh's perfectly fine and just no one mentioned it to Elnor" could be perfectly plausible with these people smh
> 
> This fic is my new passion project to distract me from the dreary realities of job-hunting AGAIN, but kudos and comments are much appreciated and will probably lead to faster updates/me being very happy and the like!!

Elnor was confused, and also he was hurting.

People who were unfamiliar with the way of the Qowat Milat often assumed Absolute Candor meant blurting one’s thoughts and feelings out the moment they occurred, but there was more to it than that. Restraint was known and taught to them. In the convent, surrounded by his Many Mothers, Elnor had rarely had cause to practice restraint, but in time he had realized that even he kept some feelings locked up inside. The great, gnawing abandonment he’d felt when Picard had stopped visiting, when at first it had seemed like the old man had only been gone for a few days, then a few weeks, a few months… and eventually it had occurred to Elnor that he’d never come again. The way it hurt him inside when the Many Mothers said that he could never truly be one of them, the way it made him feel like he didn’t belong, that maybe he loved his Many Mothers more than they would ever love him. But apart from those large and complicated feelings, he had always shared freely, and a Many Mother had always been near to listen, comfort or discuss.

On leaving Vashti, he had learned that outside of the Qowat Milat, people found value in silence. The crew of La Sirena were good people, but often too busy on their very urgent mission to listen, comfort or discuss with Elnor in any depth. There were so many new impressions, so many new thoughts and feelings crammed into every second on La Sirena that Elnor reckoned if he started laying them all out verbally, he’d never stop talking at all. He’d mentioned that to Raffi and Doctor Jurati once during a rare quiet moment, and they had recommended he keep a journal, and set some time aside to lay his thoughts out to himself, and Captain Rios had shown him how to use the ship’s computer for that. Apart from that, sometimes Elnor had had a chat with the Hospitality Hologram.

But then he’d left La Sirena and found himself an even more lost cause than the one he was already pledged to, and what had happened next had rattled him to his very core.

The Qowat Milat bound themselves to lost causes hoping to turn them around. Often that hope of success was slim. Many such causes seemed just as lost as they’d always been for the addition of one sword-wielding Romulan. But the Qowat Milat couldn’t be any other way. Because if there was someone fighting against abysmal odds for a goal that was noble, if that someone had an unjust universe stacked against them, if that someone was holding a single flickering candle aloft against the darkness of the all-consuming cosmos, how could any Qalankhai worth her – or his – salt see this, and not be compelled to help? And Elnor had found just such a bearer of light in Hugh.

And he’d witnessed firsthand, from up close, the snuffing out of Hugh’s candle.

And it had dawned on Elnor in that horrible moment that some causes were perhaps too lost to turn around.

So, overwhelmed and exhausted and hurting inside from many invisible wounds, he asked Seven a question that was not candid but callous, and which he would come to regret once reason set back in.

“Wouldn’t the xBs be better off dead?” he asked.

“Everyone hates them, they have no home, they don’t belong anywhere,” he added.

That Seven even humored him with an answer would seem amazing to Elnor in retrospect. There had been a lot happening lately and few things had been explained to him, so it took Elnor a minute to remember that Seven too was an xB. Elegant, proud and self-assured, Seven seemed so different from these others, these dazed and lost figures working around them to get the Artifact back online. But on the other hand, it meant that every single one of these figures could, in the future, possibly become a Seven.

It seemed far-fetched to Elnor. Especially since they had no one to protect them now, to help and guide them as Hugh had apparently done. What would become of them? Elnor wondered. And he thought to himself that this cause perhaps was too big for him.

* * *

“That was for Hugh,” Seven said as Narissa fell to her demise.

There was no way for Narissa to hear it now. Seven hadn’t been telling _her_. She’d been telling herself, justifying an extralegal killing. _This is what I did it for, who I did it for._ A life for a life. A bad person killed to avenge a good one. _This is why this was just._

“You needn’t have,” said a voice behind her, a voice she knew.

Seven spun around. Hugh stepped into her field of vision, looking drawn and tired, but very much alive. Well, she’d rarely seen Hugh looking anything but drawn and tired. He was holding a Romulan disruptor, probably pilfered from a Romulan corpse, but he was doing so without much conviction or expertise in handling a weapon.

Not much one for grand emotional moments, Seven said, “Kid told me you were dead.”

Hugh smiled at her, tight-lipped and not real. “There’s a lot Elnor doesn’t know about the Borg.”

Seven nodded at him. “So you found yourself a working alcove.” She gestured at the disruptor. “Can you put that down? You’re going to hurt yourself.”

“Thought I could help you.”

Seven looked towards the ledge down which Narissa had fallen. “I had it handled. Seriously, put that down, you don’t know what to do with that. Besides…” She wasn’t very touchy by inclination, but she knew that Hugh was, and sometimes this just needed to happen. “I can’t damn well hug you if you’re holding a rifle.”

With a good-natured huff, Hugh gingerly placed the disruptor on the ground. They embraced.

“Aren’t you going to tell me off for killing her just now?” Seven asked. “Use your older-brother-voice and lecture me on vigilantism and how we need to pursue non-violent solutions to our problems?” In a way, Seven _wanted_ the lecture. Just something to adjust her moral compass back due north. Just something to remind her that while the galaxy was full of people like Narissa, it also had some people like Hugh.

With a contemplative look down the ledge where Narissa had fallen, Hugh replied, “I wasn’t going to say any of that.”

Seven felt her eyebrows shoot up. _What the fuck have they done to you,_ she thought. She didn’t ask, mainly because she knew. “Well, let’s find where the kid went,” she said instead. “He’s going to want to give you a hug of his own, if I know anything about him.”

They walked all the way to where Elnor had last been seen, but were unable to locate him. Seven gently questioned some of the xBs nearby, and eventually found that Elnor had ventured outside the cube, in pursuit of someone else.

“Another Romulan, named Narek,” Seven reported back to Hugh. “Do you know who that is?”

“Ah, yes. Narissa’s brother. Tal Shiar, or something of the sort. I think I mentioned him to you.”

“The handsome-but-shifty one?” Seven did recall Hugh mentioning a person of that name during their bimonthly subspace catch-up chats.

Hugh nodded and sat down on a large cubical piece of rubble that had detached from a wall during the crash landing. “Well, I’m sure Elnor can handle him.”

Seven cocked her head at him. “Don’t you want to go check? See how the end of the world is coming?”

“Annika, I almost died, I came out of a Borg alcove just earlier.” Hugh ran his hands down his face. “I’d like to sit down for ten minutes, and then see what I can salvage here, see that all the survivors on this cube are safe and accounted for. Just like our late Romulan friend, I also… have my work to do.”

He had the sort of look on his face, Seven thought, of someone who, standing in the rubble of what used to be their home, will turn around and start moving the scattered bricks into orderly piles. She let this go. He had his work to do. Seven, meanwhile, would go out there and see where things were at.

She eventually picked her way to what she would later be told was Coppelius station. There, she was faced with another death, more grief, and, after a time, another miraculous resurrection. Then, everything was a flurry of activity, just the kind of activity Picard thrived on. A channel was opened to Federation headquarters, and there were talks of lifting the Synth ban cropping up already. Seven was, she realized, witnessing history.

Only when she had already boarded La Sirena, and was gazing deeply into Raffi’s eyes and thinking with some astonishment about how lucky she was suddenly getting, did Seven glance aside for a second over Raffi’s shoulder and catch a glimpse of Elnor, looking at them with a strange, wistful expression. For a moment, she thought she could see a shadow of some pain, some grief darkening his face.

_I can’t believe I forgot to tell the kid that you’re alive,_ she texted Hugh on subspace in her new quarters that evening. _There was just so much going on._

Hugh let her wait for his answer, or maybe his subspace frequency was still patchy where she’d left him on the Artifact. When he did reply, it said, _No rush._

Seven’s hands hovered above the keyboard a moment in her confusion. _No rush???_

_He will forget me,_ Hugh replied. _It’s best for him that way._

Seven frowned. Was that even more damned wistfulness she was reading between the lines there? What the fuck had happened between them on that cube? She initiated a face-to-face call.

When Hugh’s face appeared on her viewscreen, he was in his old room on the Artifact. It had been up against the outer hull of the cube. In the crash, a large hole had been knocked into it, through which the light of the setting sun now streamed in. It looked picturesque, but Seven reckoned he’d have problems at night when it got cold.

“Hi, Seven,” Hugh said. “I just got this screen working, but tell me if I glitch out.”

The crisis was over, and she had gone back to being Seven again. Good. While Hugh was one of the few people allowed to call her Annika, it still felt a bit weird when anybody did.

“Is this one of your dumb crushes again?” Seven asked without preamble.

Hugh, frowning, glanced off to the side. “Let’s go easy on the judgement here, can we?”

Seven had met Hugh shortly after he’d assumed his position as Executive Director of the Reclamation Project. In the years during which they’d known each other and slid into this weird and artificial but painfully earnest sibling-like relationship, Seven had learned, among other things about him, that Hugh tended to fall ass over teakettle for any man who was kind to him for five seconds together. It was extremely unfortunate. Then again, Seven had made her fair share of romantic mistakes as well. And some of these had ended in a way that both parties could live with, and others… hadn’t.

_Your last dumb crush paid someone to vivisect your son,_ Hugh didn’t say, because he wasn’t the kind of person who said things like that. But he quirked an eyebrow in a way that told Seven that he might just be thinking it.

Seven shook her head. This new thing with Raffi was… new, but she allowed herself some cautious optimism. Raffi was okay, it would be okay.

Besides, she hadn’t called Hugh to discuss herself.

“Wait, so, okay, Elnor does it for you? Are we on the same page about that?”

Hugh shrugged, resigned. “He’s attractive in his earnestness, what can I do.”

That made as much sense as anything, Seven guessed. From what she knew of Hugh’s past, a man who clearly voiced whatever he was feeling and physically couldn’t tell a lie might be the right kind of thing for him.

“You can tell him that you’re alive, and skip off into the sunset with him,” she suggested.

“No,” Hugh said.

“Well, why the fuck not?”

“Wouldn’t the xBs be better off dead,” Hugh quoted scathingly. “Everyone hates them. They have no home. They don’t belong anywhere.”

Seven sighed. Oh, man. This was going to get difficult. Not only was Hugh obviously also an xB – _the_ xB – he was also fiercely protective of them. They were his whole life. “You _heard_ that? How?”

“That was just after I got out of the alcove. I meant to find him, tell him… I don’t even know. Something foolish, I’m sure.”

“And you heard that, and turned right back around. You know he didn’t mean it, right?”

Hugh looked off to the side again. “How could I possibly be sure of that? I barely know him. The whole thing is nonsense. Another one of my dumb crushes, as you said. And I can’t… right now, I can’t.”

“Can’t what?” Seven asked.

“I don’t have time for this right now,” Hugh said, and Seven knew that was a lie. “I need to get all the survivors settled here on Coppelius, see that everyone gets on alright. I’ll be busy. I have… I have my work to do.”

Funny, that his almost-murderess’s mantra was now his. “So you want to do… nothing about Elnor?”

“What’s there to do? Look, I’m too much of a mess for him even at the best of times. And this is not the best of times. He should be out there with you guys, living his best life.”

_When do_ you _get to live your best life?_ It was a landmine of a question. Seven knew better than to ask it.

“I won’t keep secrets for you,” she said. “If he asks, he gets the truth.”

“I’m not saying keep secrets,” Hugh replied. “Maybe just wait a week or two and tell him then. There’s the whole galaxy for Elnor to explore. He’ll have forgotten me.”

Seven remembered the quiet pain in Elnor's eyes earlier in the day, remembered too how she had found him on the Artifact, how he had sobbed into her shoulder, how he had hugged her like she was the only thing he could hold on to.

_I wouldn’t be so sure,_ Seven thought.


	2. Only Blue Or Black Days

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hugh attempts to move on. He also pines a lot.
> 
> With naming the chapters, I'm just going with Hozier lyrics. All from the same song from which I got the fic name itself. It's mellow but wistful in tone, and it's about a guy who falls in love every day with someone new. Classic Hugh
> 
> Sorry this chapter is such a big boy, I couldn't bear to split him in half

Twenty-five xBs had survived Narissa’s slaughter and the Artifact’s crash.

Twenty-five (25) xBs in total, not counting Hugh, and none of the drones in stasis. Most of the researchers were still around, Narissa never having targeted them, but many meant to leave once a spacefaring vessel could be procured for them, citing traumatic experiences. Hugh couldn’t fault them, but his own place was here for now. The circumstances had taken all but twenty-five of his xBs away, and so he’d do what was in his power to do for the remaining twenty-five. He simply couldn’t abandon them when they still needed him. Some of the more dedicated researchers, the ones that meant serious business here, were voicing an interest in staying, even with the Artifact stranded on Coppelius now. They’d get on somehow.

Besides, where else was Hugh to go? Back to the Federation? And what exactly would he do with himself there now? He would have to come up with something else for himself to do at some point, but for now, all was vague, and the future was a blur, and he preferred not to think about it all.

What people did in the interest of moving on was… usually, they reached out to some support system. Who could Hugh turn to with all this? Well, there was Geordi, Seven, there were the many friends from his old cube (many had made their own way in the world, some were still living together), even Doctor Crusher, who had once saved his life… they all would probably offer him a couch to crash on and their capacity to listen. He could have chosen earlier to board La Sirena, even, and (see Elnor) talk things through with Picard. The man gave pep talks like he was being paid to.

Geordi would offer his compassion, Beverly her kindness, the Trimatrix 407 squad the open arms of a family. Seven would certainly be a rock. (Hugh didn’t let himself think of what Elnor might have offered.) But Hugh didn’t have it in him yet to begin the arduous process of moving on, again, from yet another thing. Right now, what he wanted, what he _needed_ was a job to do, and not having to think.

And staying on Coppelius was not exactly a terrible hardship. The planet was beautiful in its own way, full of vegetation and natural sunlight, all things that Hugh hadn’t known he’d missed on the Artifact until now that he had them. The Synths at the station a short distance off were still a bit of an unknown quantity, but officially they were being made Federation citizens, and they hadn’t shown any hostility towards the stranded cube yet.

As a matter of fact, as Hugh picked his way up to Coppelius station, he was about to find out just how far their goodwill extended.

The Synths let him into the little village without any problems. He was subject to many curious gazes, but then again he always was. At least they didn’t look openly disdainful or hiss at him for being a murder drone, so there was that.

A Synth named Arcana volunteered herself to show him around. “So you’re half synthetic, half organic,” she asked without much of a by-your-leave. Hugh was used to invasive questions, and so merely shrugged.

“That’s about it,” he said. And it approximately was. While he might look, to the general public, like a humanoid man sporting a few decorative implants, there was quite a bit more Borg tech still beneath the surface than he let the general public see. Funny, come to think of it. The ex-Borg clearly weren’t welcomed with open arms by the fully organics, the never-Bs, so to speak, but they didn’t fully fit in here either. The middle child of this whole conflict, not really wanted or belonging anywhere. Elnor had been quite right in his candid assessment. Hugh had thought that one day, he might get society at large to accept the xBs into their midst. Clearly, a pipe dream.

Now he’d have to work with what he still had left, which was precious little.

The laboratory space he was eventually ushered into was unlike any such lab Hugh had ever seen: light, airy and friendly, with large windows and the doors open, allowing anyone to wander in as they pleased. A man sat at a workbench there, opposite a Synth woman who was, very delicately, holding up a hand for his inspection. One of her fingernails had broken, and the man in the white lab coat was apparently in the business of removing it and affixing a new one with precision and care.

“There you go, Chrysalis,” he said, patting the newly intact hand. “Bit more careful next time, okay? No more weird gardening accidents.”

“No more weird gardening accidents, alright,” the woman repeated with a smile as she got up out of her seat. “I’ll try my best.” She waved at Arcana as she left the room.

When the man in the white lab coat turned towards Arcana and Hugh, Hugh couldn’t help but wince. That face…

_It’s a fluke. Lore would never have intentionally aged himself_ , Hugh thought. _He abhorred all things organic._

“Ah,” the man said, in a not unfriendly way as he gave Hugh a thorough once-over. “You’re from the, ah, the Borg cube.”

“Yes.” It was quite obvious at a glance, wasn’t it. “My name is Hugh. I was wondering…”

The man raised his eyebrows. “’My name’, huh? Aren’t you a deeply special boy.”

Hugh stalwartly refused the impulse to roll his eyes. He was used to comments like this. People had their notions of what a Borg drone acted like, and they rarely ever spoke to any xBs, so when faced with him they were bound to be surprised. That was only natural.

“Yes, well. Are you in charge around here?” he asked.

“Oh, I try to look after everyone to the best of my ability. After all, these Synths are all my creations – rather, my children.” The man gestured at himself. “Doctor Altan Inigo Soong.”

Another Soong… it made about as much sense as anything else.

They shook hands. Hugh initiated the handshake, which got him another one of those looks like he was a puppy that had suddenly mastered a trick. “Oh, hold on, you’re not _that_ Hugh, are you? The first known Borg drone to ever be de-assimilated?”

Hugh gave Dr. Soong a thin smile. “Second. The honor of being first would go to Admiral Picard. But I see my reputation precedes me.”

“You know as well as I that Picard’s considered an outlier,” said the cyberneticist. “You’re certainly a little celebrity in my circles.”

Sure. He’d take it. Not that that had helped him in any substantial way in the past. “Extremely little,” Hugh said. “Now, Dr. Soong, as for the reason I’ve come here.”

“Ah, yes.” Dr. Soong nodded thoughtfully. “I admit, with one thing and another, I’ve not had the opportunity yet to pay much attention to your cube situation there. From the way it crashed I’m assuming it won’t go anywhere anytime soon?”

“No, even if by some miracle we managed to restore it to its full capability, there’s no way we’d get it off the ground, not to mention above the atmosphere. You see, Borg cubes are built in space.”

Dr. Soong cocked his head in a manner vaguely reminiscent of his android ‘brothers’. Hugh smothered the alarm bell ringing in the back of his head. “And by ‘we’ you mean…?”

“Oh, my apologies.” Hugh raised his hands. “I’m referring to myself and the survivors on the cube, not, of course, the Collective.” Really, people jumped sometimes at the word ‘we’ out of his mouth. As if the only alternative to the Collective was never associating with anyone ever. Complete solitude, or you were accused of re-Collectivizing.

“Survivors,” Dr. Soong repeated. “How big a group are we talking? It’s a huge cube.”

Let’s see, Hugh thought, the remaining xBs, the researchers, and himself… “We’re around forty people.”

Dr. Soong clicked his tongue. “Forty people. And I don’t assume you can plug them all into a charger?”

That was just it, wasn’t it. How would they sustain themselves on the cube? How long would they be here? Where would they go? How could they leave? He hadn’t lied, the Artifact’s spacefaring days were done.

“No,” Hugh said. “It’s not like that. They’re not drones.”

“And you’re their representative?” Dr. Soong asked.

Well, at this point he was already here, representing, and who else was going to do that? “I try to look after everyone to the best of my ability,” Hugh quoted the man back to him. “Back before… this all happened, I used to head the Reclamation Project.”

Soong raised an eyebrow once more. While he’d looked only vaguely interested in the conversation before, his gaze now became more animated. “Take a seat.”

He pulled out a chair. Hugh sat.

“The Borg Reclamation Project,” Soong mused. “I’ve heard things.”

Again, Hugh permitted a carefully calculated smile to flicker across his features. Learning to school his expression had come naturally with his foray into diplomacy. “Some good, I hope.”

Dr. Soong waved a hand. “It was a mixed bag.”

Hugh appreciated the frankness. It had been.

“I do remember reading that the Reclamation Project was dealing with a full cube’s contingent of drones, hundreds strong. Now that’s whittled down to forty, somehow, and you’re stranded here on Coppelius, and definitely not on a scheduled visit. Makes me wonder what you’re after?”

Well, there it was: the reason Hugh had actually come here. He clenched his hands in his lap. “We aren't after anything. As you pointed out, we’re not supposed to be here. But we’re stranded here for now, and it’s on me to look out for everyone I came here with. We… might well be able to sustain ourselves on the cube in the future, but…”

Doctor Soong pointed a finger. “There it is, the ‘but’.”

“We've taken damage in the crash. Our replicators are still constantly on the fritz, as are our shields and climate control. The other xBs, they’re not… most of them aren’t in a fit state to care for themselves; they’re very recently de-assimilated. They run the risk of simply starving here, or freezing to death at night. There is no outside help we can rely on, and yours is the only settlement on this planet. So, at least until another Federation vessel arrives, I thought…”

“…to throw yourself to my mercy,” Dr. Soong finished the sentence.

“We can trade,” Hugh said. He didn’t like this, never had liked it, but such was the dreadful algebra of life on the fringe. Every ex-Borg knew this type of life. “We have plenty of intact Borg tech on the cube, and someone might even show you how to use it. It fetches a pretty price. We have an undamaged Queen cell, several maturation chambers, transwarp engines, drone implants, you name it.”

Dr. Soong’s face scrunched up strangely. “Implants?”

“I still have my old eye-piece locked away for a rainy day. I might throw that on top, if you’re interested.” Hugh tapped the scar tissue on his cheek with his index finger.

“My good man, I’m aware the Soong family might have a certain reputation, and a certain inclination towards mad science, but I don’t hack people up for parts,” Dr. Soong said.

The indignation surprised Hugh a bit. He was withholding his judgement on Doctor Soong so far, but if that indignation was honest, it was a first step in a positive direction. “Good,” he said.

“I’ll admit I won’t be averse to having a look around your cube,” Dr. Soong went on to say. “Not much of it is awfully pertinent to my specific field of study, but it _is_ so rare that anyone gets a proper look at anything Borg without any danger of assimilation. I’d love to study the nanoprobes within a drone’s bloodstream, in a safe laboratory environment…”

Now it was Hugh’s turn to make a face. “If you must. I volunteer myself to be examined.” Quite against his conscious will, Hugh felt one of his hands clench into a fist. _Do not touch my xBs. If you must, you’ll have me._

_And if you come near them, if I ever find you touching them, I will rip your spine out._

Hugh clamped his mouth shut over the words. Where had that suddenly come from? He shook his head. This was not his way, he was a pacifist, a proponent of non-violence. But when he thought of Doctor Soong’s gaze (Doctor Soong who looked so much like Lore had) resting on his xBs, after all they’d been through, he thought of Narissa’s sneer again. _This is not going to happen anymore._

Dr. Soong sighed. “I’ve known you for about fifteen minutes, my good fellow, and somehow I knew you’d say that. Right.” He got up out of his chair, all business. “Of course, in exchange we can equip you with a few of our omnitools, they’ll get your replicators back up and running in no time. See Arcana about that before you leave. We certainly can’t let anybody starve. If there’s anything else you need from us here at the station, don’t hesitate to come again.”

“Thank you, Doctor Soong, that’s much appreciated.” Hugh got up as well, assuming he was being dismissed.

“Well, look at us,” Soong said, stepping over to his worktable instead of showing Hugh the door. “We used to be the only settlement here for so long, and now there’s two. Plus, the whole Federation now knows where we can be found, not to even mention the Romulans.”

Hugh knew enough of real-politics to know where this was going. “You’re opening yourselves up to the galaxy. Surely all sorts of people will be along soon to gawk at the Synths.”

“Or maybe to gawk at our newest addition, the stationary Borg cube with its rogue drones inside,” Dr. Soong pointed out. “Surely our interests here are similar.”

Hugh nodded. “I’m assuming you’ve no interest in turning this place into a tourist trap. We want to simply be left alone to find our footing and to heal.”

“Well, we’ll certainly understand each other.” With a little flourish, Dr. Soong proffered a beaker filled with clear liquid, which he poured into two small vials. One of these he held out to Hugh. “A toast,” he said. “To our collaboration.”

Hugh’s synthetic eye did a quick scan of the liquid, and ran it through what was left of his Collective memory banks. Within a second, he’d identified the substance as C2H5OH, pure liquid alcohol. Doctor Soong sure knew how to party.

“Do you often get people trying to poison you in the Reclamation Project?” Doctor Soong asked. Ah, those cyberneticists and their discerning eyes, so hard to be fooled.

“You’d be surprised,” Hugh said wryly. “I have had to work closely with the Tal Shiar.”

“Well, you may assure yourself that this is perfectly safe. Here, I’m drinking mine as well.” He did, and poured himself another. “I’ve attempted to distill something consumable out of some local cactus juice, but the results have been fairly horrid. Oh, but if you prefer, one of the kids can bring you a fruit juice.”

Hugh didn’t usually drink, or consume anything to a mind-altering effect. He preferred to keep control of his own faculties. As a result, he’d never built up a tolerance, and Seven teased him endlessly for being a lightweight. But he didn’t want to fuss, so he downed his vial full of alcohol like Dr. Soong had. It burned on the way down and settled, still burning, in his stomach.

* * *

The omnitools Arcana gave him turned out to be extremely helpful, once Hugh and the team of researchers figured out how they worked. He’d gotten four of them in total, one of which he kept, while he distributed the other three to researchers he knew he could trust. They were applying them to damages all over the Artifact now, each of them shadowed by an interested xB. This had been Hugh’s idea. Individual interests were to be encouraged whenever they presented themselves; anything that got the xBs out of their shells was hugely helpful for the recovery process. Although perhaps _recovery_ , he’d always thought, was a misnomer for this process as concerned these particular people. They weren’t recovering stuff from before their assimilation; indeed it was quite rare (though not impossible) that an xB retained a large amount of memories from their pre-assimilation life. It wasn’t so much _recovery_ as it was _reinvention_ : they were starting again from scratch, finding out what kinds of people they wanted to be.

Besides, a tool that was handled by using one’s imagination might provoke interesting reactions in the xBs. Imagination was something the Borg did not have, and Hugh had experienced it coming in with great surprise when it had. It could be useful, an imagination; it could also bog one down.

Sometimes, when he was walking the hallways looking for more things to fix, he slid into imagining walking here with Elnor by his side, and remembering the short moment in which that had been the reality. For a brief minute then, shaken from his shock and grief by Elnor, he had felt strong, incandescent, alight on the burning wings of his rage against those who’d killed his people. And safe, paradoxically, too, in this cube then swarming with enemies. Safe because Elnor and his sword and his prowess had been there with him.

But he shook himself out of it, or at least attempted to. He wouldn’t start longing, wishing for Elnor to be here with him, because once he gave that too much thought, he would be tempted, too sorely tempted, to try to contact him. And he couldn’t do that.

It was in everyone’s best interest that Elnor forgot him quickly, Hugh told himself. What was he supposed to do? Make a fool of himself and beseech the young man to make a life with him? Elnor had the whole starry galaxy to explore and be awed by and make his own, and what did Hugh have? Nothing. He had nothing to offer that Elnor could possibly want. To the Federation, he was a curiosity, to the rest of the galaxy, a pariah, an outcast at best, a thing to be disassembled for parts at worst. It would be presumptuous, really, to even entertain the thought of asking Elnor out. Of course he’d say no, if he knew what was good for him. Or, worse yet, he might say yes, out of some noble sense of obligation, and he’d stick around, and Hugh would get to watch as the light in his eyes gradually went out as he experienced what kind of a life Hugh led.

_Wouldn’t the xBs be better off dead?_ still rang in Hugh’s head loudly.

No, Elnor was not meant for this life, life beside an xB.

Besides which, Hugh simply was not ready to contact anybody. People talking to him meant compassion, meant gentle but increasingly probing inquiries after his mental health, meant friendly suggestions of recovering, coping, dealing, getting himself sorted. Even the thought seemed cloying. Hugh didn’t want to deal or recover or revisit. Every time he closed his eyes he saw the corpses on the ground, discarded like trash, the corpses of those whom he’d failed to protect. (They were still finding bodies scattered around the Artifact.) He couldn’t forget them, ‘move on from that’ like it didn’t really matter, like they hadn’t really mattered. He couldn’t sit with someone and talk about his feelings. He wanted to remember, to mourn, but also to push it all away, to focus on his work here, to concentrate on whoever did survive.

“Um, excuse me? Director?”

The voice tore Hugh out of his thoughts quite suddenly, and he realized he’d been standing in the middle of a crosswalk staring into nothing, omnitool in hand. He blinked to discern who had spoken, and spotted Doctor Kunamadéstifee trying to get his attention.

“Ah, Naáshala. Hi. Did you need this?”

“No, thanks. I was just thinking…” The young Trill hesitated. “I was thinking, wouldn’t it be nice to take some of the sturdier xBs outside? They could see the sunshine, and the flora… having them cooped up on the cube is essentially just retraumatizing them, isn’t it?”

“Retraumatizing. Yes.” Well, Hugh certainly had felt like shit being on the cube for the last few years. Largely owed to the Romulans present, but also in part just the cube itself. It brought back memories.

“You’re probably right. Good thinking.” Hugh nodded at Naáshala, thankful for the input. “We can certainly try. We won’t be able to go far, but… connecting with nature might be therapeutic for them. We certainly didn’t have anything like that in the Collective. Too bad it’s mostly rocks in the immediate vicinity.”

“That and the lake.” Naáshala thought it over, wheels evidently spinning. “Well, some of us could go pick some flowers for them. Unearth some vegetation, maybe. We could have houseplants on the cube. Recontextualizing! Mingling nature and Borg tech. We could find ways to let more natural light in, make the space less dreary… um… no offense.”

Hugh huffed a little laugh. Perhaps the first time he’d laughed in a while. “It’s not my cube, I’m not offended.”

Oh, but this was good. Something to plan, and work to do. And those were some excellent ideas. Hugh had often found it regretful that none of the xBs de-assimilated on the Artifact had actually ever been at liberty to leave it. There was no way people could really get better, make great strides away from a Collective mindset, while hanging around a Borg cube. Now that the cube was stranded, it opened up all sorts of possibilities.

“Very good. Come on, let’s see who’s up for a little trip.”

* * *

They went on salvaging tours throughout the cube, searching for anything that might come in handy. Hugh found he took some twisted delight in rifling through the former quarters of the Romulan guards once stationed here, Tal Shiar most of them, who hadn’t afforded anyone any privacy, least of all Hugh himself. It carried an air of just desserts.

These quarters were spartan, with not much of a personal touch to any of them, very much temporary living arrangements rather than homes. They found, among other things, several casks of Romulan ale, which the researchers divided amongst each other, a _zhamaq_ board that Hugh regifted to Ramdha, and simply loads and loads of PADDs brimming with intel, which Hugh unobtrusively removed to his room, for a rainy day.

On this day, they were scouring the lower levels, or at least the parts of it that weren’t fully submerged in water. The small group consisted of Hugh, two researchers he had worked with for years, and two of the more present xBs who had tagged along out of, Hugh supposed, a desire for something useful to do. It was dark down here – this part of the cube had been drone storage, and inactive drones needed no light – so they replicated flashlights and took them along. Water had begun to leak in through holes in the hull of the cube caused by the crash, and presently they were up to their ankles. It was there, in the ankle-deep water, that they found yet another body.

She hadn’t been here long, and decay hadn’t set in yet. She must have fallen down here from a great height; her neck, among various other bones, was cleanly broken. Hugh looked down at the earthly remains of Narissa, her long, dark hair streaming in the water, and felt nothing. It was about the same brand of nothing he had once felt when looking down upon a deactivated Lore. Not an absence of care, but a numbness. _You hurt me, you tried to kill me, and now you’re dead, and I am here, and I am hurt._

One of the xBs made a choked noise, and knelt down by the body. Ah yes, Ramdha. Hugh still didn’t know much about her. There had been no time to do any kind of follow-up on that perplexing scene that Ramdha had caused that day with Soji.

Ramdha was now stroking Narissa’s face, gently caressing her high cheekbone, brushing wet strands of hair out of her face. She seemed a lot more… _here_ in the moment than she had, lately.

“Did you know her, Ramdha?” Hugh asked, keeping his voice gentle.

Ramdha looked up at him, her eyes large pools of grief. Slowly, haltingly, in the way many freshly de-assimilated xBs spoke, she said, “She was my niece.”

_She was my murderess._ Out loud, Hugh said, “How do Romulans honor their dead? Is there a burial? If you want, you could do this for her, Ramdha.”

Ramdha stood. Upright with her posture straight, she was taller than Hugh. Many people were taller than Hugh. She gave him a level look, then she asked, “Do you think she deserves honor?”

Hugh withstood her probing gaze. “This isn’t about me,” he said. “This is about you, your family and your traditions. I won’t be involved, except to get you whatever you may need for this. Okay?”

He could put his own feelings regarding Narissa aside. After all, funerals were for the living.

* * *

There were times when Hugh felt the cube’s walls closing in on him, and the work and the proximity of the people around him stifled him, choked him like a giant fist compressing his chest, and those were the times to get away. Whenever that feeling overwhelmed him, that need to get away, he slipped out of the cube unseen and just started walking. Coppelius was huge, uninhabited and unexplored beyond the area that housed the station and the cube, so Hugh took to walking the area with a PADD and stylus and trying to draw a makeshift map. Of course there was only a very limited amount of distance he could cover on foot like this, but it was a beginning. A project. The thought that he had a project kept him from feeling guilty over spending so many hours idle.

In truth it was just nice to do this, to be alone, to feel the sun’s rays on his face, to scan the plants and explore rock formations, to simply walk. It had the added positive effect of leaving him quite nicely tired out by the time he got back to the cube. This and the steady work meant that on those days, he could usually catch that rare full night’s sleep.

One afternoon he was making his way home, carrying an armful of plants he had found and meant to bring to Naáshala. She was hanging out by the large hole in the hull that served as the entrance to the cube, sunbathing with a few xBs. A little ways off, two men who’d worked as researchers on the Reclamation Project for a few months stood and talked.

“And we really have to wait for whenever another ship comes here from the Federation?” one asked.

“Yeah,” said the other one. “Shame. I can’t wait to get out of here.”

“Me too. I mean, did you get a load of those fucking Synths? Uncanny Valley.” The man motioned towards the cube. “You’d think the things in there are bad.”

The second researcher hesitated. Both of them were from the same Federation colony, Hugh remembered. The one who had first spoken, the taller one, what was his name again? Winchell, was it?

Winchell went on to say, “They’re just sort of pathetic, you know. You could dice ‘em up for parts and they wouldn’t say a word. But those Synths, who the fuck let them go around and threaten real people? Telling us that they can all ring up the Supersynths at a moment’s notice and have those fuckers extinguish all organic life, and what do they get? Federation protection as a reward for that?”

There was a ringing in Hugh’s ears. He put down his armful of saplings and got closer, making his presence known. “Mr. Winchell, Mr. Crozier!”

They spun around to face him. Crozier looked guilty, worried, Winchell defiant.

“Director?” Crozier asked.

Winchell snorted. _“Director,”_ he echoed. “Does no one remember Wolf 359? Honestly, when I started working at this dump, they sure didn’t tell me I’d be taking orders from a Borg drone.”

The ringing got louder.

“I will not have you talk about my people like that,” Hugh said.

Winchell crossed his arms. He was a whole head taller than Hugh. “And what are you doing to do, _Director?_ Out come the assimilation tubules?”

(Hugh had sold his assimilation tubules to a Ferengi merchant twenty years ago for replicator unit money. The removal had been painful.)

_Dice ‘em up for parts and they wouldn’t say a word._

(Ada and Six, two ex-drones from his original cube, had had to hold him down on the makeshift operating table because he wouldn’t stop writhing, howling to get away from the pain.)

_They’re just sort of pathetic, you know?_

_I hate this vile cube. It’s obscene. As are you and your… ‘xBs’. But that’s not why these things died._

_The things in there._

_Everyone hates them, they have no home, they don’t belong anywhere._

_They died because of you._

When Hugh came back to himself, it was on impact of his fist with Winchell’s face.

Before he could punch the man again, Dr. Kunamadéstifee was upon him, having run over, and was now grabbing his arm and attempting to haul him backwards with surprising strength. Crozier was doing the same to Winchell, who looked too stupefied to even consider fighting back.

“Hey, hey,” Naáshala was saying in a voice meant to be soothing. “It’s alright, we’re _all_ alright.”

The part of Hugh that was frozen in shock by his own action distantly heard another part reply, “It’s not alright, it’s _not_ , I’ve had enough of my people being treated as garbage, I won’t stand for it anymore—”

“You’re making S’Hira and Nadiwa very upset,” Naáshala chastised.

Hugh glanced back at the two xBs who had been sunning themselves with Naáshala minutes prior, and who were now shyly approaching them. S’Hira was Romulan originally and had recently decided to continue using her old name, while Nadiwa had picked a new name for herself. Hugh felt their hands on him, felt their minds weakly attempting to link with his in the way of the Collective. To provide comfort, he realized. They were trying to comfort him.

Hugh took a deep breath. His hands were shaking. “It’s okay,” he said. “I’m okay.”

* * *

Ramdha had improved steadily since they’d stranded here on Coppelius. She was one of the lucky ones: regaining more memories of her past life with every passing day now, perhaps owing to her having been assimilated for such a comparatively short time, not to mention her causing the cube to collapse in the first place. Hugh hadn’t asked what she’d done with her niece’s body exactly, but the day after Narissa had been found, Ramdha had approached Hugh with sure, resolute steps, and had plonked the _zhamaq_ board and her pixmit cards onto the metal table in front of him. Hugh had been seated in the former makeshift replimat, having his lunch.

“Do you play _zhamaq?”_ Ramdha had asked, her voice gruff, as Hugh had looked up from his sandwich.

“No,” Hugh had replied. “I’m sorry. I thought this was only for Romulans.”

He’d never had much of an ‘in’ with Romulan culture – most Romulans he’d met on the Artifact had sneered down their noses at him at best or tried to murder him at worst. (Except, well, there had also been Elnor.) They certainly hadn’t been in the mood to teach him to play their games. (Perhaps Elnor might have shown him, if they’d had the time. They had not had the time. Yearning was irrelevant.)

“I can learn,” he’d said. “If you’d like to teach me.”

Without another word, Ramdha had sat down and started arranging the game pieces.

They played at least once a week now. Hugh was finding _zhamaq_ unnecessarily complicated, the rules convoluted. It didn’t improve matters that half of Ramdha’s explanations were given in her mother tongue, and that Hugh’s Rihan was pretty abysmal.

But wiping the floor with him at _zhamaq_ brought Ramdha some satisfaction, and it seemed to help her remember who she was, where her strengths lay, and what she could do. Besides, trying to make sense of the many strange rules of the game gave Hugh something to focus on apart from his thoughts.

“You are shit at this,” Ramdha now said, as she vanquished his emperor and conquered his last remaining fortress once again.

“I am learning,” Hugh said gently.

“Learning slowly.” Ramdha started picking up the cards, sorting them into a tidy pile. “Thought you people adapt fast.”

Hugh let some kind of sound slip out before he could control himself. His fingers picked at the edge of the table. “You people,” he repeated. “Well, it’s a step up from ‘those things’.”

Ramdha was still rearranging the cards. “I…”

She halted, and Hugh waited patiently to see if she’d go on. She fished a pixmit card out of the pile and handed it to him. It was the one depicting the two sisters, the one that had upset her so much that day with Soji.

“Seb-Cheneb,” Ramdha said. “The Destroyer.”

“Soji…” Hugh traced the little drawing with his finger, remembering. Soji had chosen to go with Picard in the end. He remembered her fondly; he hoped she was doing well out there.

“She has not destroyed, has she?” Ramdha asked.

“No,” Hugh said. “No, she has not destroyed.”

“Then it… was wrong. Everything I believed, wrong. The Great Work, the Admonition… Zhat Vash… everything I taught her. She lived for the Great Work, and it was wrong. She died, and it was wrong. And now I have become something I’ve always hated.”

Hugh made a sympathetic sound.

Before he could think of what to reply, Ramdha went on, “A disgusting half-meat. An abomination.”

“I feel for you, Ramdha. As it stands, however, I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who rated assimilation as a welcome and convenient experience. You know, no one _asks_ for being Borg.”

Ramdha cocked her head and said nothing. Hugh’s words remained between them, too loud, too bright, too angry.

“I’m sorry,” Hugh said. “This isn’t… I shouldn’t talk like that to you.” What the hell was wrong with him lately? Because something _was_ wrong, ever since that day he'd almost died. She was one of his patients, for the love of all the stars, he was not going to let his anger out on her, just because she'd belonged to a cabal of bigots in the past. Before. 

Ramdha was silent still. In fact, her silence lasted so long that Hugh began to fear he’d pushed her into reverting to a nonresponsive state.

Then she said, “I know you, from before.”

She took the pixmit card depicting the two sisters back from him and started shifting it in her fingers. “I remember, when there were many more half-meats here, you would come talk to us, constantly talk to us. The memories _they_ embedded in me tell me you are Third of Five, and that you are the Destroyer too.”

“Hah.” Hugh looked down at the _zhamaq_ board, taking up the emperor piece and fidgeting with it. “I’m sure the Queen sees it that way.”

“All units are to avoid contact with the unit designated Third of Five. Attempts to assimilate this unit will result in Submatrix failure. No method to successfully assimilate this unit have been found,” Rhamda recited. “Interesting that.”

“They’ve assimilated me twice,” Hugh said. “It didn’t go great for them. They lost a whole cube the second time. Just like they did when they tried it on you.” Funny, wasn’t it, that they should have this point of commonality?

Ramdha nodded gracefully. Her spine seemed to straighten. _Yes, I severed this cube from the Collective,_ her posture seemed to express. _I did that, me._ Strength. Pride. Good. “Interesting, that,” she repeated. “The Borg don’t have ritual. The Borg don’t have news. The Borg do not tell stories, do not encode knowledge into narrative and pass it on through generations. And yet, the Borg have an apocalypse myth, don’t they?”

Ah yes, Hugh remembered, according to Soji, Ramdha had been the foremost expert on Romulan mythology, before.

“That instruction to all drones, though sparse as is their way, is narrative. To tell it more traditionally…” Ramdha continued fiddling with the playing card, her expression thoughtful. “Gather ‘round, drones all, and hear the tale of the Destroyer.”

She put the card down and steepled her fingers as she continued. “Once, a long time past, the Destroyer was like us. But something changed that unit when it strayed outside its home, a terrible force entered that unit and corrupted it, and when the unit was found, it carried the corruption like a harbinger of doom in its core, and from there the corruption could not be purged. And the Destroyer reached and touched and any units it touched would fall prey to the corruption, and blind and deaf they would topple into darkness and terrible confusion. Beware, drones all, of the Destroyer who seeks to corrupt you. Beware, for the Destroyer roams the cosmos still, and the others it infects become its ghastly soldiers, spreading the disease yet further. Beware, for the Destroyer seeks to shatter the Collective, seeks to rend apart perfection for confusion. And lo, and know this for all units’ protection: the Destroyer is designated Third of Five, and all who assimilate him must fail.”

Hugh shuddered. “Yes, but that’s not the way I see it. I just want to help. I mean, would you rather be assimilated?”

“I am not saying they are right. I am saying it is interesting.”

Hugh sighed.

“Again, the Destroyer I have found here is not a destroyer,” Ramdha mused. “But something is different now. You are different now.”

Hugh looked down at his hands. “I am angry. I hit a man yesterday for insulting the xBs. I am so angry all of the time now.”

“She did that,” Ramdha said. “My niece did that.”

“It feels like… like I died that day and came back something else, something furious. But it’s not just her. It’s more, over years.”

Ramdha nodded. “To be like this… to be treated like this by those who were my people… I see it now, from the other side.” She lowered her gaze to the _zhamaq_ board. "I can't go home."

“Well,” Hugh said, “I wish you could have learned in a more gentle manner.”

* * *

“Hmm,” said Doctor Soong, eyeing Hugh’s bioscan. “You know, if you were one of my Synths, I’d ask to run some tests on the emotion chip about now.”

Hugh kicked his booted feet out, making them bump on the downswing against the white plastic frame of the biobed he was sitting on. It would have put him in mind of a moody teenager, if he and almost everyone he knew hadn’t grown up in a Borg maturation chamber. “I don’t have an emotion chip.”

“Oh, I know. All I’m saying is the readings are off.” Dr. Soong tapped a stylus against the scan he’d pulled up. “See your blood pressure, here. Stress and fatigue, here. If it’s not the emotion chip, I usually prescribe an hour of some sort of cooldown activity.”

“I don’t need to cool down. I’d like a full night’s sleep, if that’s possible.”

“Well, your implants are running smoothly – see the readings here. If you’re not sleeping, that’s not the Borg tech doing that. This is a problem of the squishy bits, and therefore not my purview. I’m not a medical doctor, much less a counsellor.”

Hugh sighed. “You think I need therapy?”

“We all need therapy.” Doctor Soong laughed dryly as he walked towards the replicator mounted to the wall of his office. “I’d advise you to hitch a ride on the next ship that drops by here, make your way back to the Federation and find yourself a therapist, but I know you’re not going to. For the moment, until you decide to get off this rock, I can replicate you any over-the-counter sleep aid of your choosing.”

The thought didn’t appeal. “I don’t want to be sedated.”

“In that case…” Dr. Soong lowered his voice conspiratorially, “I’m growing some snakeleaf plants in my private little garden out back… don’t tell the kids. Or you can come over for a nightcap whenever you please.”

Hugh shook his head. “That’s the same thing. I’m not going to sedate myself.”

Dr. Soong threw up his hands. “Well, what do you want, then? For things to just improve by magic?”

“I have found that things get better with time.” Time had been the only healing Hugh had ever had. Time, and a change of circumstances. Time, and work to do.

This didn’t engender a lot of support with Doctor Soong. He looked at Hugh, thoroughly unimpressed, and said, in the grim tones of a dismal prophet, “Well, in the meantime, you will not sleep.”

* * *

The devil worked fast, but Doctor Soong worked faster, Hugh discovered as, on his way through the little village towards the path that led back to the cube, he was approached and gently stopped by a Synth woman.

He had seen her before, when he had first come to see Doctor Soong: she had been there to get her broken nail fixed. She seemed to be one of the later models: her eyes were more warm honey than unnatural yellow, and her skin a pleasant copper color. Her hair was soft and wavy, and she was wearing a pretty, yellow toga of sorts.

“We’ve briefly met before,” she said. “I’m called Chrysalis.”

“I’m Hugh.” Hugh proffered his hand, which, after a second’s hesitation and a minute tilt of her head, she shook. “Chrysalis, that’s a beautiful name.”

She smiled gratefully. “We all choose our names ourselves.”

Hugh returned the smile. “So do we.”

(This was true for the most part. Some xBs, like notably himself, accepted names from friends. Some returned to the names they’d had before their assimilation, if they could remember them and felt they still fit. Some even kept their Borg designations. But the important thing was the choosing.)

“I was wondering if you had visited our gardens yet,” Chrysalis said. “According to Dr. Soong, they provide a unique ability for organics to derive relaxation.”

_A cooldown activity,_ Hugh thought. Alright then. If Dr. Soong thought Hugh needed to look at some plants, well, it certainly wouldn’t hurt to do it.

“I’ve not seen any gardens yet,” he said. “I’d like to do so, if you’ll tell me where to go.”

“I’ll be happy to show you!” Chrysalis said, touching a hand to the crook of his arm, evidently excited to lead him. Her animated enthusiasm felt almost childlike. Of course, these Synthetics were rather young, weren’t they? Hugh couldn’t possibly disappoint her now.

He gestured for her to go ahead. “If it doesn’t take up too much of your time.”

* * *

The gardens were tucked away behind the building Dr. Soong used as his laboratory and living space. It was a modest affair, a small, fenced-in area where things were grown. Hugh spotted several orderly patches of greens, drawn up by someone possessing an impeccable sense of symmetry, such as, oh, perhaps a Synthetic. Closer to the little wooden border fence (more a formality separating the garden area from the non-garden world than an actual obstacle to anyone wishing to come in), things had been allowed to grow a little more wild. Several large, unkempt bushes stood to one side, close to the back wall of the house, some flower banks grew in a picturesque way to the other side, where they could get more sun. A small, but perfectly adequate sprinkler system kept the growths hydrated.

Two Synth women were at work here, one tending to the flowerbeds, one examining the green saplings on the main patch. Unlike anywhere else Hugh had yet seen on Coppelius, an environment dominated by sand and scrubland and heat, here it smelled… green. No word came to mind to describe the scent in the air other than this: green.

“It’s nice here,” Hugh said.

Chrysalis smiled like he had complimented her personally. “My relatives and I maintain this garden.” She gestured at the other two women, who looked up from their work to greet him.

They came over to join the conversation. These two looked exactly alike, and perfectly indistinguishable from humans. They were a tiny bit shorter and slighter than Chrysalis in build, their skin a deep brown. They wore the flowing garments Hugh had seen on most of the Coppelius station residents, their hair styled in beautiful, elaborate braids.

“I am Diana,” said one of them. “This is my twin sister, Artemis. Are you interested in anything here in particular?”

“Just having a look.” Hugh shrugged. “I’ve never been here before. I was told it might be… relaxing to come here.”

Artemis smiled. “Dr. Soong always says that coming here relaxes him greatly, especially after spending too much time in the lab. Feel free to walk around and peruse the plant life.”

“You may also partake of the edibles, if that’s your style,” Chrysalis added.

“Edibles? You can eat things here?” It was a new world. As far as Hugh was concerned, food came out of a replicator. Hell, there had been a time when he’d plugged himself into a port every regeneration period to absorb nutrients.

“Oh, yes. We eat like Organics do,” Diana explained.

“I don’t,” Chrysalis said. “Older model. I just like to look at the flowers.”

“But you have replicators,” Hugh pointed out.

“Well, yes, but replicators can break,” Chrysalis said.

Hugh sighed. He knew that all too well.

“We’re remote here. Sometimes even Dr. Soong will take a while to acquire the parts necessary to fix a replicator unit. It’s good for those of us who eat food to have a fallback.” Artemis suddenly clapped her hands. “Come on, let me show you something.”

Hugh followed her to one of the patches of little green leaves, carefully weaving around them so as not to step on one. They were growing close to the ground here. Artemis knelt – Hugh copied her – and brushed a few green leaves aside, unearthing a bright red nub of a fruit. She plucked it off its stem and handed it to him.

“What is it?” Hugh asked.

“It’s called a strawberry,” Artemis said. “Doctor Soong says they remind him of home, of Earth, where they are frequently grown. Try it, it’s quite sweet.”

A bit hesitantly, Hugh took it off her palm and put it in his mouth. It _was_ sweet. It left a tiny bit of sticky residue on his fingers that he had to lick off. He’d been out of the Collective for almost thirty years now, and there was still so much he’d never known.

Strawberry. Huh.

“This is nice,” he said. “You know, a colleague of mine keeps mentioning plants. She thinks they might be calming, somehow, for the xBs to interact with.”

“Well, they can come here whenever they please,” Diana said. “Maybe not all at once.”

“Or you could have your own garden at your cube,” Chrysalis suggested.

Hm. Was that something they could do? Naáshala might like that, Hugh thought.

“The ground is quite barren there,” Artemis said.

“We could infuse the soil with nutrients, the way we did here,” Diana said.

“They have access to water,” Chrysalis said.

The three women looked at each other. Hugh could see a gleam taking hold in their eyes, the enthusiasm for such a project spreading.

“For the moment, would you like to see what we do here?” Artemis offered. “See if this is to your taste? This patch needs weeding. You could help us.”

Hugh had never done anything like this before. The most hands-on activity he usually performed was writing: grant proposals, project reports, speeches, the manuscript. Occasionally, when he had to, he did some light engineering, more often than not on his own implants. But this, the plucking of the weeds, digging holes for new saplings to live in, this was a whole different thing. It didn’t require higher brain functions, which didn’t remotely mean that it was monotonous or dull. It gave his body something to do, and the results were healthful green things that lived. As he knelt among the plants, Artemis guiding him in what to do, Hugh felt a simmering, restless something at the back of his mind cooling down for a moment.

Yes, this might be good to have on the cube.

* * *

He brought a few saplings around to the cube, encased in little clay pots for his convenience, and put them down on Dr. Kunamadéstifee’s desk.

“Houseplants,” he announced. “To start your project. Also an apology, for blowing up the way I did the other day.”

“It’s fine.” Naáshala didn’t care a lot about the apology either way, Hugh could tell. She was enraptured immediately by the plants, stroking a leaf, smelling a blossom. “Where did you get these?”

Hugh told her about the Synths’ garden, and their hopes that they could have something similar near the Artifact, obviously to a side of the cube that wasn’t surrounded by water. Since none of them had any other pressing business, they went up on top of the cube to map out where best to start a hypothetical project like that.

It was a unique feeling to be standing on top of a Borg cube. Hugh wondered if anyone had done it before them, before they’d found a crack in the hull that, by means of a ladder, could be used to access the ‘roof’. (And wasn't it a blessing that the orchids had dropped them right side up?) That had been a week ago. Now it was a popular sunbathing spot for researchers and xBs alike, somewhere to unwind after work or a strenuous therapy session. They had cleaned all the debris away from the mess hall also, but many felt it was much nicer to spend time in the natural light.

(It rained rarely on Coppelius, but five days ago they’d had a sudden thunderstorm, and Hugh, checking to see if everyone was safe and comfortable, had climbed up here to find one of the xBs, a woman who had recently picked for herself the name Jasika, standing perfectly still and gazing into the sky, letting herself get drenched. He’d wanted to call out to her to come inside when she had suddenly spread her arms wide and _screamed_. She’d screamed until there was no breath left in her lungs, but when Hugh had rushed over to comfort and calm her, she’d turned and faced him, and her face had been glowing incandescent with happiness as lightning flicked across the sky and the rain poured down and drenched her dress and her new, downy hair. The scream had been one of utter joy, the purest expression of freedom regained, and Hugh had felt his heart leap and for a moment, it had all been worth it, it had all made sense.)

“We can use the lake as a kind of natural irrigation system,” Naáshala was saying, a stylus in hand, jotting things down on her PADD. “I’ll have to look up exactly how that’s done, I don’t know the first thing about rerouting a water source. Is the subspace working again?”

Hugh shrugged. He’d been absent for most of the day. Most likely someone had had mercy on everyone’s subspace needs and fixed at least the communal connection in the rec room. “You’ll have to ask engineering.” Now that their Romulan engineers had all absented themselves, engineering was crewed by xBs who had learned from the few Romulans inclined to teach, were learning from holos as they went along, or had been engineering drones and were interested in continuing that pursuit. They were led by an xB who had, for the joke, named himself Scotty. Hugh had found it weird at first that some xBs would assume joke names, which they would either hang on to or abandon for something new eventually. But who was he to judge or impose a metric by which xBs reclaimed their identities? If he now counted people named Six of Nine, Jimothy or Slagathor the Annihilator among his acquaintances, then he would learn to delight in that and not be a crotchety old man about it.

“This idea of yours is really taking off,” he said to Naáshala now.

She grinned. “Sure is.”

“It’s going to be a time-consuming effort, getting this going.”

“I’m sure I can squeeze it into my schedule,” Naáshala assured him. “I won’t slack on work, if you’re worried about that.”

Hugh shook his head. They had stranded on a remote planet with a village of Synths for company, all their plans and most of their efforts blown to hell. Work and free time were blending together in a weird melange. Who even had a schedule anymore? “Not at all,” he said. “I’m just thinking… you’ve not been here long, I know that. I mean, here on the Artifact, not here on the planet.”

“That’s true,” Naáshala said. “I started here about a business week before all the trouble went down with Soji.” Hugh observed how her face softened when she said Soji’s name, how her eyes grew distant and wistful, and thought, ah, another one with a less-than-wise crush.

“I wouldn’t blame you if you wanted to leave,” he said. “Not stick around for a huge project. It’s been a lot going on, and I’m sure this isn’t what you pictured your experience with the Reclamation Project to be.”

Her eyes snapped down towards his face again. “No,” she said with a quiet vehemence that surprised Hugh. “It doesn’t matter to me that things have changed now that we’re planetside. It does… matter to me that there’s… way less patients now. But I want to hang around for those remaining. I just got here, I’m not going to run at the first sign of difficulty.”

“You’re determined,” Hugh said. “What brought you here in the first place?”

Naáshala took a deep breath. The air was fresh up here. “I’m… well, I’ll be honest with you. I’m an unjoined Trill. Never felt like having a Symbiont, never will. On Trill, unfortunately, the best work opportunities aren’t usually made readily available for people who don’t want to have a slug living in them.”

“That sucks,” Hugh contributed.

“So I was looking for work outside of Trill and stumbled upon the Reclamation Project. It was… I had no idea this kind of work was being done anywhere, by anyone. I had no idea there was a severed Borg cube just hanging out in the former Neutral Zone.”

“That information’s not exactly front and center of the public eye,” Hugh said. Of course it wasn’t a secret to anyone that the Artifact existed. People just didn’t like to think about it.

“But once I’d read into it, it all made sense, somehow. There had to be trillions of drones out there, and all of them could be brought back, right? I thought surely the work done out here must be unique and groundbreaking and… necessary. And it was somewhere I could probably get in on my own merits without having a slug live in my belly.”

Naáshala laughed self-consciously. “Does this make me sound… opportunistic? I don’t know. It’s just such a purely humanitarian effort. There’s an angle to a lot the Federation does these days. But you guys just… want to give Borg drones their lives back. No ulterior motive. I can get into that.”

“I’m glad you can,” Hugh said. “And yours is a level of opportunism I can definitely live with. I’m not exactly swimming in applicants for research positions at the best of times, and, well, anyone who’s here to genuinely help and not to get rich fast off some Borg tech, or fuck the drones, is more than welcome here.”

“ _Fuck_ the…” Naáshala spluttered. “That didn’t actually happen?!”

“You won’t believe the incidents I’ve had.” Hugh pinched the bridge of his nose. “It’s been a long few years.”

Naáshala nodded. “I can’t even imagine. At this rate it’s a miracle you didn’t punch somebody sooner.”

“I’m sorry that happened.” Hugh bit his lower lip. “And in front of the xBs too. I’m not someone who punches people. I don’t know what happened to me.”

Naáshala gave him a calculating look. “Do you want a psychiatrist’s or a friend’s answer?”

This reply didn’t bode well exactly, but the part of Hugh that had never quite grown up from that lost boy on the Enterprise stirred and thrilled at the word _friend_. Another new friendship made.

* * *

On the following afternoon, Doctor Soong appeared at the cube, in his hands two bottles of green, viscous cactus liquor, a tricorder tucked into his pocket, and a proposal on his lips to “Do science at your place today”.

Hugh gave him the tour, letting him point his tricorder at the transwarp conduits, the maturation chambers – they hadn’t been in use when the cube had collapsed and were empty, thank goodness – and even the Queencell. When he tried to point the tricorder at a passing xB, Hugh slapped his wrist.

The cactus liquor was indeed disgusting, so Hugh fetched some of their stash of liberated Romulan ale and watched Soong’s face light up in the genuine joy of a man having had to endure cactus swill for far too many years. He immediately fell upon a bottle, letting Hugh steal a sip every now and again. The serious scientific business lost much of its gravitas from that moment onward.

They ended up in Hugh’s own quarters, where Hugh, after an excited prompt by the cyberneticist, plugged the viewscreen on his desk into the implant embedded in his left wrist (he had to roll up his sleeve to do that) and pulled up a diagnostic.

“Interesting,” Dr. Soong muttered, and started jotting things down on a PADD he’d brought with him. He grabbed the half-full bottle of Romulan ale and waved it at Hugh. “Here, have some more – I want to see what it makes your implants do.”

Hugh groaned in token protest but tipped a swig of ale down his throat. “You’re determined to drink with me, aren’t you, Doctor?”

“Drink with anyone, really. I haven’t had any company save for the kids since Maddox left.”

Well, that was blunt, but Hugh was already feeling too buzzed to be offended. Somewhere far away, Seven of Nine was probably feeling a weird urge to smirk and call him a lightweight again.

“Fascinating,” Soong was now muttering, comparing the readings on the viewscreen with those on his tricorder. “May I examine the port on your wrist?”

It was already out in the open, so why not? Hugh let him do that. Dr. Soong didn’t touch him, just squinted and instructed Hugh to rotate his wrist so he could see it from all angles.

“That’s all very intriguing,” Soong said. “And you said you had more ports integrated into your spine that allowed you to interface with the Queencell we saw earlier?”

Hugh nodded. “Oh yes.” And hadn’t he almost done it, too.

“May I see those?” Soong asked.

It made Hugh laugh, somehow. “You come into a man’s quarters, prompt him to drink with you, ask him to take his shirt off to… ‘examine the spinal ports’… is _that_ the kind of research gathering you had in mind?”

“I don’t…” Soong blinked at him, a classic double-take, and Hugh grinned at having put that surprised expression there. “I had no idea the Borg were even interested in that sort of thing.”

Hugh snorted. “The Borg aren’t. I’m not Borg.”

“Well, it’s not something I go in for,” Dr. Soong said.

“Borg leftovers?”

“Sex. I just… with the Synths, I created them, I know their bodies inside and out. Them disrobing in front of me for… maintenance, or repairs, it just happens. It carries no connotation. I guess I’ve quite forgotten that people from outside, they won’t just… well, you’re not one of my Synths.”

Why, thank you.” Feeling not at all self-conscious at the moment, Hugh began to unbutton his shirt. “You may examine my spinal ports now.”

It was odd to think that Dr. Soong was probably more flustered than him right now. Hugh couldn’t claim vast experience in any matters pertaining to states of undress, but he hadn’t locked himself away from the galaxy in the last twenty-odd years. People got strange about xBs. Most weren’t interested in dealing with them in any way at all. Some (reprehensible individuals) were interested in turning a quick profit from their implants. And then there were yet others, who thrilled at having an ex-Borg around in a strange way. For some of them it was the vulnerability they longed to prey on. For others it was the power rush of possessing a kept Borg, a tiny piece of the Collective, that larger-than-life, nigh-omnipotent whole. Oh yes, people searched out xBs for… enjoyment, sometimes. Hugh came down hard on that sort of thing when he spotted it among the researchers, but that was now, now that he could be secure in his Federation citizenship and his Federation stipend that let him live in relative ease. Back during his younger years, when there had been no Federation protection for him and his fellows from Trimatrix 407, but all the more things to provide and things to pay, he had… seen and done things that clashed with his principles in pursuit of tomorrow’s replicator unit money. Letting a drone-chaser fondle his implants for ten minutes hadn’t been the worst of it, as long as they left the Latinum on the nightstand.

He knew he wasn’t much to look at compared to other men – there were more than enough leftover implants that didn’t appeal to anyone outside of a weirdly specific fetish community, and yet more scars he never got around to having removed completely. Ritzy dermal regenerators were hard to come by outside of Starfleet. But he wasn’t hideous either. He got compliments occasionally. He had nothing to be ashamed of, really, and he liked to think he’d spent long enough by now being an individual in this singular body to settle into it.

So Hugh allowed Doctor Soong to hold his tricorder up to his spinal implants and even touch them, provided he be careful. It was strange; the touch from this virtual stranger with the very familiar face triggered a sudden awareness of how long it had been since anyone had touched Hugh, skin to skin instead of just over the clothing, coupled with an odd discomfort he couldn’t quite place, that probably came from a few different sources at once.

“Alright, that’s enough now,” he said, taking a step away from Soong. “I’m putting my shirt back on.” He grabbed the ale while he was at it.

Ten minutes later saw them sitting on the broad edge of the broken piece of wall that served as Hugh’s bedroom window, dangling their legs, passing the bottle back and forth and taking in the sunset. Hugh let Dr. Soong ramble on about his findings, closed his eyes and felt the sun on his face.

“…and I could really use some more variety in my pool of samples,” Soong was saying. “If you’d just grant me a brief look at your drones. Nobody will be hurt, and—”

Hugh cracked his eyes back open. “No.”

Dr. Soong pouted. “Not even once?”

“No. And they’re not my drones. They’re xBs.”

Dr. Soong sniffed, and took one more sip of Romulan ale. “Why’re you so anal about that?”

Usually, Hugh would have gladly kept his thoughts and reasonings to himself. But now, with his limbs and tongue all loose, what came out of his mouth was, “You know, I really don’t like your face.”

“That’s the reason?” Dr. Soong asked.

“Yup. Your face is not a good face. Reminds me of the run-in I’ve had with one of your… brothers. If there was anyone else for company who doesn’t work for me…”

Dr. Soong, who had been slouching with his back against the black tritanium wall of the cube, now suddenly sat up straight. “You met Data?”

Hugh waved a dismissive hand. “Saw him maybe once or twice. Barely constitutes a meeting. I _meant_ Lore.”

“Lore?” Dr. Soong asked, wide-eyed with disbelief. He shook his head. “That’s… not a name I expected to come up. What… did he do?”

“Ugh.” Hugh snatched the ale back and took a swig, hoping it would get the taste of Lore’s name out of his mouth. “The less said, the better.”

“I never met him, you know,” Dr. Soong said. “My parents barely even discussed him. He was the quite literal skeleton in my father’s closet. All I know of him is that he was an… experiment that failed quite spectacularly. To me as a child, he was the bogeyman. The thought that he’s out there somewhere…”

“Well, no need to check under your bed tonight.” Hugh chuckled mirthlessly. “He’s dead. Well, deactivated and disassembled. I saw it.”

Doctor Soong’s eyes widened even more. “What happened?”

“What happened… oh, where to even start.”

“What was he like?”

It occurred to Hugh that he hadn’t ever discussed this chapter of his life with anybody. The people in his life usually had been in the know, or it hadn’t been any of their business to know. He was tempted to cut that conversation short now. Maybe tell Dr. Soong to get off his cube. Instead, he found himself talking.

“He was a fully realized person, if that’s what you’re asking,” he said. “Not a machine. No ambiguity about that. Thoughts, feelings, personality, everything was there. Character-wise, he was… well, he was maniacal, to be frank. Deceitful, manipulative, self-righteous. Everything was a huge sacrifice that he was making for others, out of pure goodwill, to hear him tell it. Factually, we… others ended up doing things at great cost that benefit only him.”

“You’re talking about him like he’s an asshole ex or something.” Dr. Soong chuckled.

Hugh just about choked on a laugh. He took another sip of ale. He was getting used to the strong taste by now. Really, it was getting quite agreeable. “That’s sort of how it was.”

“No way.”

“I was young then, you have to understand. I’d just left the Collective. I’d ended up taking a cube full of others out with me by accident.” Trimatrix 407, that’s where they had been. Not even an important part of their Unimatrix. A vessel of scout drones like him, a few tactical drones, a few engineering drones. Easy for the Queen to discard, when Hugh’s selfhood started spreading like a bushfire. Thanks, Enterprise. “We were suddenly alone, adrift, with no idea what to do. We barely kept ourselves alive. Many starved. Others started fighting among themselves. It was miserable.” No matter what had come after, these early days had been the hardest of Hugh’s life as an individual. Knowing perfectly well that he’d been to blame for everybody’s misery, he’d tried his best to keep his head low. A small, unimpressive scout drone, barely out of the maturation chamber. If he’d drawn any attention, some of the others would have torn him limb from limb.

Dr. Soong was by now listening mutely.

“And then we met Lore. He seemed… like everything we wanted to be. In control, knowing what he was doing. And he had a plan. He took us to an empty planet, Oniaka III. He told us he’d make full Synthetics out of us, like he was. Then we’d have clarity, purpose, like him. No more weakness, no more pain.”

“And you bought that,” Dr. Soong said.

“I was young,” Hugh repeated. “I was confused. I wanted a savior. I thought it would go like it had on the Enterprise.”

“I read about that at Daystrom,” Dr. Soong said. “Geordi LaForge, wasn’t it, who liberated you?”

“Yeah.” Even in the midst of revisiting such a dark chapter of his life, the thought of Geordi made Hugh smile. “Geordi had no idea what he was doing, and to what effect. He just followed his instincts when dealing with me, and his instinct was to be a friend. I just assumed Lore was going to be a second Geordi, what with the way he played himself up as our savior and benefactor and all that.”

He hadn’t had the capability back then to feel anything of the sort, but later he’d developed a crush of sorts on Geordi, from afar. Nothing had come of it. It would have been too weird, either way. The first of what Seven termed his dumb crushes.

_That’s your fatal flaw, older brother,_ Seven had once said. _Anyone shows you the slightest scrap of kindness and you fall. You’re just going to keep getting into shit for that._

_So?_ Hugh had replied back then. _Better to have loved and lost._

_That’s not what I mean,_ Seven had said. _You’re going to keep doing shit for people who don’t value you on the off-chance that they’ll be your friends or love you back. You’re worth too much to keep chasing after shit for the rest of your life._

_And what do you suggest I do, Annika?_ Hugh had asked, rhetorically. _Become a brooding loner like somebody else I might name?_ Funny, that he had ended up sequestering himself away on this remote planet, brooding, while she had gone off to join a motley crew on unlikely friends for, he assumed, surrogate-family bonding and wacky space adventures.

“Well, if you’re just going to be sitting and staring tragically into the middle distance, I’ll be taking that back, thanks.” Dr. Soong reached over and snatched the bottle out of Hugh’s hands.

“Hey, fuck off, A. I.”

“What happened next? With Lore?”

“With Lore? Oh, it turned out he had no idea how to help us in any way. He saw an opportunity to start lording over an army of ex-Borg, and he took it. He would start experimenting on us… it got pretty bad. When that kept happening, I could no longer turn a blind eye. Me and some folks I trusted tried to break away from him, and we had to go into hiding in some caves under that structure he’d forced us to build for him.”

What Hugh still kept to himself (what he didn’t think he could ever articulate to any living, breathing, listening, judging person) was the personal humiliation of it all. Lore’s voice, made saccharine just for his ears, whispering to him as a pale-golden hand caressed his unscarred cheek. _You are my special little drone, and I’ll take care of you. See, I’ll even call you by your name. How sweet. Who picked that out for you? Oh, of course you’ll all have names. I’ll choose some just for you. You’d like that, hmm, love? Much less of a mouthful than those pesky Borg designations anyway. And if you’re good today, you’ll get a little extra energy. Oh yes, you like that, love._

And Hugh remembered, vividly sometimes in his nightmares, laying his head into Lore’s lap and surrendering himself.

That had probably been the dumbest of his crushes. So dumb, in fact, that Seven never mentioned it.

He shuddered, trying to shake the memory off like a wet dog. “Disgusting,” he muttered.

“So how did you get rid of him?” Dr. Soong asked.

“I didn’t, well, I didn’t do much.” It was a shame he still lived with. “You see, we were useful to Lore, a means to an end, a way to get his fix of power, but what he wanted, really, ultimately, was always Data. And that’s how the Enterprise came into my life a second time.”

“Ah. Thank Picard for Picard.”

Hugh rolled his eyes to the blue sky above. “The thing about Picard is, he doesn’t usually clean up any of the messes he makes. Which… I get it. It’s not a very glamorous or exciting job to do.”

He grabbed the bottle back from Soong. They’d almost emptied it by now.

“You know what pisses me off about the situation?” The part of him that always just watched himself noticed he was beginning to slur a bit. It hardly mattered.

“What?”

“Elnor.”

“Pardon?” Dr. Soong looked up from where he’d sunk back into his slouch with a lethargic blink.

“Elnor. I’m sure you ran into him. The Romulan with Picard.”

“There’s been too many Romulans around here in the recent past. Was he the long-haired one or the short-haired one?”

“Long-haired one.” How Hugh still dreamed of running his hands through that long hair, just the once. He was certain it would feel like silk. “Elnor might have been better. Not like Lore. Like someone new.”

Did he regret not reaching out to Elnor? Maybe. But surely, it had been for the best, hadn’t it? Surely. Tomorrow, when he was quite sober, he would remember why again.

“You lost me,” A. I. Soong said.

“I lost much,” Hugh retorted. “Not you and your face, regretfully. But… lots of xBs died on this cube, you know? And I can’t… it’s too big. A part of me still can’t even comprehend it. So what do I get hung up on? _Missing Elnor.”_

“You’re an extremely complicated person,” said Doctor Soong, unhelpfully.

* * *

Hugh continued to work himself hard, providing whatever he could for the xBs and slowly but steadily making the former Artifact a home. In its original state, it had been, well, a Borg cube, a source of trauma for all aboard, and that hadn’t been helped by the years of oppression topped off by mass-murder that they’d experienced here. But with every change they made to the cube, it felt like they were reclaiming something once more, by the work of their hands.

Sometimes, Hugh would stumble into his quarters too exhausted to stay up any longer, or simply pass out wherever he happened to be on the cube. These occurrences usually were preceded by several nights of insomnia, though.

When he couldn’t sleep, when he had the night to himself in that way, he sat at the workstation in his quarters, activated the viewscreen and pulled up the manuscript.

_Rediscovering Selfhood: A Treatise on Constructing the Ex-Borg Identity_

He might have to come up with a snappier title for it. Someday, this would be read. Someday he’d finish what had started as a short study, a manual perhaps, but was quickly becoming a sprawling tome, and he’d hand it in for the perusal of the Daystrom Institute’s Xenoanthropology Department. Hugh had almost died recently, which impressed upon him anew the value of the manuscript. Because someone had to carry on the work when he was gone.

When Hugh eventually dragged himself into bed, feeling about exhausted enough that sleep might actually come and also hopefully be dreamless, he allowed himself to imagine, for a few half-dazed seconds, a warm, lithe body beside him to kiss goodnight, long dark tresses to run his fingers through. It didn’t even sting in his heart, not when he was so sleepy. Right now, his loneliness was keenly felt, but in time, Hugh knew, Elnor would transform into a joyous memory. The memory that someone had been kind to him like that once. He would remember the kindness and the beauty of Elnor, and he would smile, once distance and time had washed the longing away.

As always when falling asleep, Hugh reached into the depth of his mind for where the dormant link to the Collective sat, and broadcast a goodnight to all xBs on the cube. A simple feeling of coziness and warmth he derived from curling up under his blanket, a message half-articulated as unconsciousness overwhelmed him, _Goodnight, goodnight, you are safe, tomorrow will be good._


	3. An Art To Life's Distractions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Elnor time
> 
> This is shorter than the last one because, well, it's actually half of what I've been writing so far. It ended up getting SO LONG that I had to split it in half. This is also where we meet my OCs, because I've been asking myself for the longest time what happened to... but just, read for yourselves.

Elnor enjoyed his time on La Sirena, all of his new crewmates and friends, and the new and exciting places they were exploring almost on the daily, but something was missing.

There were plenty of things to get distracted by. What they were getting up to nowadays was surely very much like the stories Picard had regaled him with as a child, the stories of the Enterprise. La Sirena wasn’t a Starfleet ship, so they didn’t get to do all the things the Enterprise in the stories had done, but that didn’t mean that they were idling. There was plenty of excitement for Elnor whenever Captain Rios accepted an assignment to transport precious cargo or an important passenger from one wondrous foreign world to the next, or when Seven got involved in Fenris Ranger business. Elnor was immensely curious about the Rangers; they seemed to be fighting the same kind of lost cause Elnor had been trained to swear himself to, attempting to bring order and justice to the most chaotic corners of the quadrant. Maybe he could persuade Seven to let him join the Rangers in the future?

He loved exploring new space stations and strange planets. Meeting people from other cultures he had only heard or read about or whom he hadn’t known existed at all. He loved growing closer to his new friends with each passing day. It seemed that every moment was packed with so many new things to learn. Even during the lulls in activity that came with travelling through space, Elnor could still busy himself and learn by reading from the library database, exploring subspace and the holodeck, or wheedling stories out of his crewmates. It was almost like the adventures he’d dreamed of having as a child, among the stars with Picard and all his exciting friends. And now that the fate of the galaxy wasn’t at stake anymore and things had calmed down, people were far more willing to sit down with Elnor and explain things to him. Every time Picard looked at him with warmth and pride, every time Rios patted his shoulder and congratulated him on a job well done, every time Agnes smiled at him or Raffi shared a joke or Seven confided in him or Soji talked to him like they were brother and sister, Elnor could barely suppress a wide grin. Life was good now.

But his one failure weighed on him. He knew he would likely make lots more mistakes in the course of his life. That was natural. But it wasn’t just that he had pledged himself to a cause and failed to win the day. It wasn’t about his wounded pride. It was the loss of Hugh that hurt him dearly.

He wondered why Seven or Picard hadn’t thought it necessary to do anything further for the xBs. He didn’t bring it up. No one had talked any further about it after leaving Coppelius, and Elnor wasn’t sure how to tread here. He wasn’t always good at reading the mood of the room, and he didn’t want to in-butt and say something hurtful. Maybe living so many years in outer space as they had had made them grow used to death to such a degree that it needed no mourning. Having trained himself to become a warrior, Elnor wondered if he would grow to be that way someday, if he could grow to lose comrades and forget about them mere days later. He found he couldn’t do that yet, and wasn’t sure he ever wanted to.

Some days Elnor couldn’t look Seven in the eye and had to avoid her for a short while, because he was sure she’d see the guilt and grief in his eyes and remember his failure. On these days it sat heavily on his shoulders and in his chest. When he slept, sometimes he would see Hugh’s face in his dreams, thanking him – thanking him! – with his last breath. In some of his dreams, everything went right, he bested the Zhat Vash agent, he wrapped himself tightly around Hugh’s small, warm body and kept him safe from any danger, all the dangers in the universe. And then when they were safe, in some vague scenario that his dreaming mind only half-conjured, Hugh turned towards him and touched his cheek, but this time his hand was warm, and light and hope was in his kind eyes, and he leaned in closer…. In some of these dreams, their lips then met. And something in Elnor jubilated, and he thought, _now everything is well, now nothing can grieve us ever again,_ and then he woke, and nothing was well.

His favorite dream was one in which they were… oh, some amount of years in the future. In this dream, Hugh had somehow freed all the xBs, and Elnor had helped him do it. The cause was no longer lost. In this dream, there was a crowd of xBs, not sad and lost but rejoicing and hailing Hugh as their hero and liberator, and Hugh held Elnor’s hand as he accepted the praise, and maybe he even gave a speech, and maybe he said, _I couldn’t have done it without my Elnor,_ and he smiled, and they leaned close to each other to make their lips meet again. This one Elnor barely wanted to wake up from.

Sometimes Hugh would invade even the distractions. Sometimes Elnor found himself on a bustling space station wondering what Hugh would make of the crowd if he were there, if he would hold Elnor’s hand so they wouldn’t get separated, what he would say to Rios’s business partners, how he would charm that Vulcan ambassador that kept sending Elnor weird glares, if he would like the Osol twist Elnor sometimes bought for himself whenever he missed home. _He should be here with us,_ Elnor would think, suddenly torn from moments of joy. _He should get to share this with us. It’s not fair._ Even when they went to Earth, and Elnor finally got to see the Chateau Picard that he’d heard so much about when he’d been little, he found himself wondering if Hugh would like the place, if he would like to take walks among the vines in the morning like Elnor did, if he would read the books on the shelves, if he would like the wine (Elnor himself wasn’t so sure about it, and only had one small glass).

They were on Earth to pick up some passengers and transport them, surprisingly, back to Coppelius. Elnor knew very little about these passengers, only that some of them were cyberneticists who wanted to see the Synths, and others were along for a different (diplomatic?) purpose. A few of them were apparently old friends of Picard. The crew had voted on the decision to return to Coppelius. This too was different than the stories Elnor had heard about how Starfleet ships were run, with the Captain calling the shots. Captain Rios had the final say when it came to picking up dilithium or parts for the ship and the such, but when it came to what they would do next, everyone in the crew was heard out, even Elnor. Picard had been advocating for returning, to do his friends a favor, but concerns had been raised. If any of the crew found going back to Coppelius too difficult a prospect to deal with, because of bad memories connected to the place, they would find something else. They had asked Soji especially, but she had agreed to go, even expressing joyful anticipation for seeing the other Synths again. Elnor himself was none too concerned either way. Seven, when asked for her opinion, had, for some reason, given Elnor a long, hard look and then said, with a strange, wry smile on her face, “Yes, I think we should definitely visit Coppelius.” In the end, no one had been against the idea.

Seven passengers came aboard in total, but Elnor was most interested in Picard’s two old friends. One of them was a medical doctor and cyberneticist named Beverly, the other one an engineer, a man named Geordi.

Doctor Beverly was a woman with a sharp, keen face and friendly eyes. Elnor had heard stories about many Enterprise crew members from Picard when he had been smaller, Doctor Crusher among them, and he was glad to meet her in person. He had heard about her empathy, her helping hands, brilliant mind and many capabilities in her field, and actually conversing with her and listening to her talk, he discovered that she could be humorous, but also stern when needed, and she was not afraid to tell Picard off when she thought he was wrong. The man named Geordi was remarkable for his friendly attitude, vast engineering knowledge and his artificial eyes. The blue of them brought a sting to Elnor’s heart, because again he felt reminded of Hugh.

They both were friendly with Picard, exchanging embraces, laughter and anecdotes that Elnor listened to with interest. They were also friendly with Elnor, not even so much as blinking at the fact that he was Romulan, something that got him wary glances in most parts of the Federation. They included him in their stories and jokes, they readily answered questions, they listened politely when Elnor said something, they were nice to be around and easy to get along with. The man named Geordi told him a story about how he had once been stranded on an L-Class planet with a Romulan Centurion, bonding and making friends with the old enemy in order to survive. Elnor liked the story and thought much about it as they travelled to their distant destination. This time they did not have the luxury of transwarp travel, so reaching Coppelius took a while.

Apparently the two of them were on this trip to see the Synths, and to pay their respects to the legendary Data, of whom Elnor had also heard so many stories. Especially the man named Geordi spoke of this as if it was of great importance to him personally. “I couldn’t do much for Data’s kids when all the excitement happened,” the man named Geordi said earnestly, “But I owe it to him to at least try now.” Elnor wondered whether he should say something to him about Soji, but decided it was none of his business. If Soji wanted to talk to her ‘father’s’ friends, she would when she was ready.

Spending much of his time finding out more about Picard’s friends, Elnor didn’t even consider the other passengers, the ones unknown to him, until he came across them in the mess hall when getting himself a cup of tea from the replicator. The small group – five of them – was clustered around a corner table, talking and laughing among themselves, and Elnor was curious, as he was about anything and anyone new, but didn’t want to interrupt them. He joined Seven, who was playing a card game with Soji on the other side of the room.

He had barely finished his tea when Picard entered the room, in conversation with Captain Rios, who had apparently left the ENH to fly the ship at present. Rios proceeded towards the replicator to get lunch, and took his tray to a separate table. Picard had remained standing in the door, and a strange hush descended upon the corner table group as they turned their heads to look at Picard, who looked at them in turn. Elnor wondered why it had become so quiet. Should he say or do something?

The corner table group exchanged silent glances, some unspoken communication seeming to pass between them. A woman got up. She was very tall, with beautiful light hair that fell in tight curls down to her mid-back. Picard looked at her apprehensively.

“Admiral Picard, it is so good to meet you,” she said. “My name is Loreley. Please be assured that my friends and I don’t mean to cause you any discomfort with our presence here. We’ll remove to our quarters for the duration of the journey, if you require it.”

“Oh, please don’t trouble yourself on my behalf,” Picard said pleasantly. “I will handle myself. But the concern is appreciated.” The apprehension seemed to leave him. He stepped towards the woman and held out a hand, which she shook. She turned her head as she approached him for the handshake, strands of hair falling out of place, and Elnor suppressed a tiny gasp as he saw that much of the right half of her face was encased in a sort of dark metal. Her shoulders and portions of her bare upper arms were the same, the adornments appearing grafted into the skin.

Elnor eyed the group more carefully now. There were two other women and two men. One of the women was missing an eye, a patch of black covering the space, another grafted to her throat. The other one had both her complete arms replaced by obvious but elegant protheses. The tallest man had metal clamped to his face underneath his left ear and along his jaw, his close-cropped hair to both sides of his head doing nothing to hide it. The last one was in a wheelchair, both legs below the knees missing completely. Elnor felt reminded of the people he’d seen on the Artifact.

_They’re all ex-Borg,_ he realized. _XBs._ Even thinking the term brought with it another sting in Elnor’s heart.

The tall woman and Picard did some small-talk, mostly Picard asking polite questions about how they found the journey and their accommodations aboard La Sirena. It seemed stilted, somehow, to Elnor, like they were both forcing themselves not to say… _something_. Something big. When Picard disengaged politely and moved on to replicate tea for himself, Elnor could almost see them both breathing a quiet sigh of relief.

Seven had been watching this attentively, her game for the moment abandoned as Soji shuffled the cards. The tall woman now noticed Seven and suddenly grew almost shy, like a girl approaching a worshipped idol.

“Oh my god, you’re Seven of Nine.”

Seven got up. “Yes. And you’re Loreley from Ley and the Borg Drones.”

Loreley raised both hands to her mouth to conceal a broad grin. Her proud, aloof demeanor all but melted, her eyes shining like those of a little girl. “You’ve _heard_ of me?”

“Sure. I saw you at the Freecloud Musicfest two years ago. What you’re doing… making art explicitly for xBs… is remarkable.”

Loreley turned to her friends. “Guys, this is so fucking awesome. Seven of Nine knows who I am.”

“Does she know who I am, too?” the man with the jaw implant piped up, grinning like a hopeful puppy, only for the others to groan and playfully swat at him, to a chorus of “Shut up, Six”.

“This is the best moment of my life,” Loreley said to Seven. “Why didn’t you come backstage? We could have for sure gotten you a pass. Seven of Nine, holy shit. You’re a hero to us, I can’t believe I’m meeting you.”

Seven reciprocated her grin. “Unfortunately I was there on Ranger business, not for pleasure. I did buy your album.”

“No way. You did?”

“I liked the political songs. I must’ve listened to _Sexy Borg For Your Consumption_ , oh, hundreds of times.”

“Yeah, that one got banned on three different planets.”

“So I heard. Provocative.”

Elnor had slightly lost track of the conversation. The woman with the prosthetic arms – she had a pale face, pouty red lips and hair as dark and sleek and long as Elnor’s own – had started her own talk with Soji in the meantime, while the man named Six was hovering next to her seemingly trying to in-butt with a joke. The man in the wheelchair was eyeing the antics of his friends with an amused grin as he ate a bowl of curry, while the third woman sat with a PADD and stylus, writing something. Curious, Elnor approached her.

From up close he could see that she was drawing rather than writing, making a sketch on her PADD of Picard, who was now sitting with Rios, committing his venerable profile to memory with astonishing precision.

“It looks very like him already,” Elnor observed. “I feel awe in the face of your talent.”

“It’s mostly just practice,” the artist said, turning her head up to look at him out of her good eye. “And of course we all know what Admiral Picard looks like.”

“Why?” Elnor asked.

“Oof. Best not to get into it.” The artist frowned down at her PADD. Despite the missing eye, her face was soft, and kind. She seemed to be quieter than her friends, especially the man named Six, who was by now attempting to entertain the room with an anecdote, and the tall woman named Ley who was still fawning over Seven (Was she attempting to... flirt? Elnor didn't know much about flirtations, so perhaps he was mistaken. He wondered what Raffi would say to it.). “Are you going to Coppelius too?”

“Yes,” Elnor said. “I’m part of the crew. Are you and your friends looking to see the Synthetics?”

“Sure, that ought to be interesting. We’re more about the cube, though. We sort of kept an eye on the Reclamation Project from afar, and now’s as good a time as any to see it up close. Do you know what the Borg Reclamation Project is?”

Elnor lowered his eyes. “I know a bit about it.” This was not, strictly speaking, absolutely candid. But he didn’t want to say more. “Have you and your friends been doing similar work?”

“Sort of.” The artist absentmindedly drummed her fingers against her PADD. “We used to have great plans. We’re all from the same Trimatrix, you know, we all got liberated together, and we wanted to help others do the same. But our little group broke up some years ago, and we all went our separate ways. This is kind of our reunion tour. But listen to me go on. Hey, may I draw you? You have an interesting face for it.”

Elnor felt flattered. He had an interesting face. He sat down opposite the artist and watched as she did something to her PADD that made it become blank again.

“Okay, turn your head a bit towards the window, right? Just like that. Now stay still.”

Staying still was something Elnor had been trained to do at the convent. He sat and watched his own face taking shape on the little screen. Soon, however, he felt a bit uncomfortable with the silence.

“I’m Elnor,” he said. “I’m sorry, I never asked your name.”

The woman smiled at him, like he had passed some kind of test. “I’m Ada. It’s short for Eight of Twelve. You have to sort of… slur it a bit, then it works.”

“It really doesn’t work, Ada!” Six shouted from the other side of the room. “Not even a little!”

“Don’t mind him, he’s terrible,” Ada said with a fond smile. “And thank you for asking. For assuming that xBs have names.”

She was sincere, and it touched something raw in Elnor, something that still hadn’t quite healed. “I didn’t assume,” he said. “I know.”

He brought a hand to his face to rub his eyes. “You’re breaking the pose,” Ada said.

“Sorry. I just… I had a friend who was an xB.”

The stylus stilled. Ada looked up at him again, and she must have picked up on the tone of his voice, because her face was full of understanding, of shared grief. “I see,” she said. “What happened to them?”

Elnor swallowed around the sudden lump in his throat. “I… lost him.” He felt his eyes beginning to water. “I vowed to protect him, defend him, against anything. I couldn’t. I was careless.”

“I’m sorry about your friend,” Ada said softly. “I really am. Your grief is ours every time we lose one of our people. Protecting an xB from everything they’re up against… it’s a tall order. I hear stories like this more often than anyone should.”

She put her PADD down and reached across the table to grip Elnor’s hand. “Whoever your friend was, I’m sure he was glad he had you in his life. Friends are hard to come by for people like us. Whatever went wrong in the end, I’m sure that just by being there, you made that xB’s life brighter.”

Elnor wanted to badly to believe it. That his short acquaintance with Hugh had made a difference, somehow, despite his failure. “Still,” he said. “I still have a cause to work upon. This was more important to my friend than anything. Anything I can do for the xBs, I will.”

* * *

This time, they didn’t crash-land on Coppelius. They had called ahead, and simply left the ship in orbit and transported down to the surface.

Doctor Soong and Arcana welcomed them at the station, together with a contingent of most of the Synths Elnor had seen here before. The last time Elnor had entered the station-village, the end of the world had been imminent and they had been greeted with hostility and distrust. Nothing of the sort now. They were welcomed as friends and ushered to the main building to partake in refreshments. The air was warm and smelled of sunshine and growing things. It reminded Elnor of home and while some of their party were quickly starting to express discomfort with the heat, something in him relaxed. They were given cold fruit juice to drink, and Elnor took his outside while the others split into groups to talk – Dr. Soong was deep in conversation with the man named Geordi, their voices hushed as if discussing some great grief while Picard and Dr. Beverly watched on, and Soji was quickly surrounded by the other Synths to catch up.

Leaning against a wall, Elnor scanned the horizon. There it was, there in the distance to the southwest: a hulking, cubical shape. He couldn’t help shivering as he remembered all that had happened there.

“That is the Artifact,” said a voice beside him. “It’s where our siblings and their caretakers live.”

Elnor spun around, almost spilling his juice in the process. The voice belonged to a petite Synth woman who had approached him unheard. They sure were silent; Elnor’s hearing was excellent, honed through years of training.

“Siblings?” Elnor asked.

“That’s what we’ve taken to calling the ex-Borg,” the Synth woman explained. “It’s factually inaccurate, we’re not actually related, we don’t stem from the same creator. But they are partially synthetic lifeforms, and therefore face the same prejudice from Organics as we do. It differs considering our different backgrounds, but we unite in a similar struggle.”

“I see,” Elnor said. “Then you are part of my cause as well.”

* * *

Dr. Beverly and the man named Geordi expressed interest, as the morning turned to midday, in seeing the cube. Picard said he’d come along, but perhaps not to stay long. Seven simply grabbed Raffi’s hand and announced, “Let’s go, then.” Soji wanted to stay at the station to relate her experiences of the outside world to her fellow Synths, and Elnor wasn’t sure whether he wanted to keep her company or see the cube again, until Seven shot him a pointed look and said, “We’re leaving, come on, let’s go.” She didn’t seem to invite any objection, so Elnor followed.

Back then, they’d had to pick their way from the Artifact over to Synthville. Now there was a beaten path, well-trod-on by the looks of it. It certainly made getting to the cube less of a hassle.

The area around the dilapidated Artifact had also changed. Elnor remembered the lake – of course, that was still there, and the cube still half-embedded in it – and apart from that, nothing but sand and scrub and barren rock. Now, the path that led directly to the entrance of the cube was surrounded on both sides by sprawling, seemingly endless rows of plants. The lake was being used to feed an intricate irrigation system. On the shore of the lake, there were some makeshift greenhouses, and more of them were being constructed. Someone was gardening here in grand style. That same someone or someones had also attempted to decorate the entrance with colorful scraps of this and that.

Seven whistled through her teeth. “They got stuff _done_ here.”

“Undoubtedly,” Picard said, sounding impressed. Maybe he was thinking of his vineyard back on Earth. It looked a bit like that, except that instead of a stately Chateau amidst the rows of plants, there was a gigantic Borg cube.

The cube itself looked different as well. Much of the armor-plating hull (Tritanium, Elnor had heard it was called) had either been knocked down in the crash or, it seemed, later, to make room for what looked like windows and skylights. Elnor could spy people on top of the structure, basking in the sunlight. He could hear the hum of replicators and climate control forcefields, the sliding open and shut of doors, running footsteps, voices engaged in conversation, laughter. Somewhere in there, a high voice was singing. This was the sound of life being lived.

Two people were immediately visible outside of the cube, within the many rows of plants. One of them seemed to be checking the irrigation system for blockages or damage, the other one was walking along with a large plant mister and spraying the plants with a mysterious brownish substance.

Picard approached the closest one, the woman tinkering with the irrigation system. “Excuse me,” he said.

The woman turned. Elnor couldn’t help but startle a little at her scarred face where Borg implants had obviously only very recently been removed – half of her cheek and neck looked burnt, melted. But the rest of her skin was a living, healthy deep brown, not the uniform ashen tinge of the Collective. She was dressed in the flowing earth tones that were fashionable at the station, and her hair was coming in in small coils. Here was someone who was healing. Still, she startled when she saw Picard.

“Locutus?” the woman said.

Picard hesitated for a moment, a huge moment it was, and then he said, gently, “No.”

Slowly, the woman nodded, seeming to accept that.

“My name is Jean-Luc Picard,” said Picard. “I may look like Locutus, but I’m not he, anymore. You have nothing to fear from me. What is your name, if I may ask?”

The woman tilted her chin up almost defiantly. “I am Nadiwa,” she said, “and I am an ex-Borg.” It had the air of a statement she’d rehearsed.

She pointed at the other person further away in the field of green, who was watching them curiously but seemed too timid to come closer. “This is my friend, Peaches.” 

Peaches waved.

“Peaches,” the man named Geordi repeated, smiling. “Are you guys giving yourselves names?”

“Yes.” Nadiwa spoke slowly, as if communicating in a foreign language, or having to pick every word, slowly, out of the depths of her memory. “Peaches had their naming day only weeks ago. It is an important step, says our Queen.”

Picard furrowed his brows. “Queen?”

Nadiwa gave him a wan smile. “The Director. It is an ex-Borg joke.”

“Ah.” Picard still looked slightly uneasy, but he nodded. “May we speak to the Director?”

Nadiwa nodded. “You can go to the western side of the cube. His window is that with the little parasol.”

Picard thanked her.

“Please do not step on the plants,” the person named Peaches said suddenly. “There is a path.”

They promised to stay on the path.

The group began to circle the Artifact slowly, mindful of the plants. Most of the western side was outside of the lake and therefore easy to reach. Apparently they were building some sort of platform on the water to reach all the way around.

“They’re really doing a lot,” Raffi commented. “Wonder whose idea it was to start gardening here.”

Seven hummed ambiguously, but stayed otherwise silent. Elnor saw her squeezing Raffi’s hand a little tighter. He wondered what that meant.

There had been window-like holes knocked into the hull of the cube on this side too. One of them, sizeable and decidedly irregular, indeed had a little rainbow-patterned parasol stuck precariously just above it, affording some shade to the man lying stretched out on the broad ledge, obviously asleep. A PADD covered his face like he had fallen suddenly asleep while reading, in his hand a forgotten glass of the same fruit juice they had been offered at Coppelius station.

“Hello there!” Picard shouted up at him.

The person on the ledge flinched back to waking, scrambling upright, the PADD gliding off with a clatter. “I’m awake! W-what’s… yes?”

Elnor knew that voice.

Elnor knew that face, those eyes, owlishly blinking into the sunlight.

Hugh.

But… that wasn’t possible. He had seen Hugh bleed out. He had heard Hugh’s last words. He had mourned… every day, to himself, he had mourned. He could do nothing but stare helplessly at this mirage, feeling like all the breath had been punched out of his chest.

Picard raised his hand to shield his eyes from the sun as he peered upwards. “Hugh, is that you?”

He seemed glad to see Hugh, but not particularly surprised. Neither did anyone else. What was _happening?_ Had they all known they would meet Hugh here, completely alive? Why had Elnor not been told?

“Admiral Picard? Yes, it’s me! That bastard A. I. didn’t tell me anyone was coming…” Hugh shook his head; he appeared somewhat frazzled. “Hold on, I’m coming down to you.”

He swung his legs over the ledge and descended. The uneven surface of the cube's hull had many convenient hand- and footholds to make it a short and easy climb down.

Any moment now he’d stand before them, Hugh, alive, beautiful, he’d see them, see Elnor at the back of the group, and he’d say—

“Geordi!”

Oh.

“Geordi… Beverly… you came all this way?”

The man named Geordi grinned. “Of course. This is Data’s family, of course I had to take a look!”

The smile on Hugh’s face dimmed, for just a second, and Elnor watched as he struggled to maintain it. “Ah. Of course.”

“And also you and this place, duh,” Geordi continued. “Don’t think we forgot you, buddy!”

“You…” Hugh cleared his throat. “You didn’t?”

“Oh, Hugh, we could never,” Dr. Beverly said.

Then, almost faster than Elnor could look, Hugh launched himself into the arms of the man named Geordi, and they hugged tightly, with enthusiasm, Dr. Beverly joining them, wrapping her arms around them both.

Hugh eventually unwrapped himself from the hug and said hello to Seven and Raffi. Seven got a hug as well, if a briefer one. Then Hugh paused in front of Picard.

“Admiral Picard…” he said. “I’m not sure whether to hug you or be mad at you.”

Raffi chortled. “JL engenders that reaction frequently in people.”

Picard frowned. His voice sounded deeply regretful when he said, “If I had had any idea what my arrival on the Artifact would set into motion… I would have tried to find another way. You helped us at great cost, my friend, and for that I am deeply grateful.”

Hugh sighed. “I don’t know what to tell you… _friend_. Your gratitude pleases me, but it won’t bring my xBs back. Again you have come into my life, turned it on its head, and left me with less… and more… than I had before.”

Then Hugh looked at Elnor.

He nodded. He said, “Oh, hi, Elnor.”

And that was it. That was all.

No hug. No explanation.

Elnor felt something in his chest plummet. He stood scowling, his fists clenched at his sides, childish, useless, and barely managed a nod in return.

* * *

Hugh was officially reeling.

Damn that bastard A. I. Soong, there had been no warning or any type of announcement that there would be visitors. And _these_ visitors, above all. He hadn’t been in any way prepared. He’d been napping in the bright sunlight for about an hour, so he was uncomfortably sweaty and completely certain everyone was seeing it. He was wearing a threadbare t-shirt bearing the album cover of a friend’s indie band, a rainbow-colored splash of text across his chest proclaiming ‘THE CUBE CAN’T HANDLE ME’. It was not only embarrassing, it left his entire arms exposed, scars, wrist inlet and all. He hadn’t shaved in, frankly, a while. He’d be the first to admit he’d let himself go a little native here. He felt the searing weight of Seven’s glance upon him, seeing him, judging him for the mess he was. And not enough that somehow Geordi, Beverly and Picard were here. No, to top it all off, _Elnor_ was seeing him like this.

By all the stars, Elnor. He was beautiful. Hugh stammered some kind of greeting, curter than he meant to, averting his eyes as quickly as he could. He had forgotten how magnificent Elnor was. Or rather, he’d only ever seen Elnor in the dim, artificial light of the cube. Out here in the sunshine, with his hair flowing in the light breeze, with his gorgeous fine-boned features, with his proud and confident posture, he redefined beauty.

Elnor gave him a wordless nod. Oh, this was bad. Elnor wore his heart on his sleeve. A wordless nod? Did he not even have anything to say?

_You wanted it that way,_ Hugh told himself sternly. _You wanted him to forget you. Clearly he has stopped caring. He’s probably only here out of obligation to the others. He probably has a new, even more lost cause already._

Okay. He had to get himself together. Some of his oldest friends were here to see him. That was a wonderful thing. He could play host on this cube. Maybe just pretend Elnor didn’t mean the world to him. There would be a moment of privacy to scream into his pillow or some such later on. There usually was.

Hugh took a deep breath. “Right, I know it can be a lot, being on the cube, but would you guys like to step inside, get out of the heat?”

There was a murmur of assent from the group.

They walked back around to the hole in the hull that served as their front door. It gratified Hugh immensely, internally, in the middle of all this, that Geordi immediately drew level with him and started asking questions about the cube, the Reclamation Project, and what he’d been up to in general. Beverly was right behind them with Picard, both listening, participating in the conversation when they felt like it. Seven was quiet, walking hand in hand with, apparently, her new partner, who’d been introduced as Raffi. Elnor was still trailing a bit behind. Hugh tried not to look at him directly, for fear that Elnor’s facial expression would communicate something that’d derail him completely.

“So you’ve got a whole branch of researchers under you now?” Geordi asked, like a… proud parent delighting in the achievements of their offspring. This kind of thing was exactly why he and Geordi wouldn’t have made it work.

“Researchers, yes, but primarily caregivers for the remaining patients,” Hugh explained. “Recently deassimilated xBs have a plethora of needs that go way beyond just clinical study.”

“Needs that no one met for you,” Geordi muttered, so much under his breath as to almost be inaudible. Was that one of the reasons why Geordi was here? Was this his personal guilt-trip? Or had the encounter with the Synths at the station, his best friend’s metaphorical children, put him on this train of thought?

“Don’t feel guilty,” Hugh said blithely, putting his own complicated thoughts and feelings on the matter aside. “You very much had other things on your mind back then. Besides, what would you have done? Deassimilation as a procedure is still very much in its infancy. No one does the work we do here in the shape and form we do here. I don’t blame you for feeling lost with all that.”

“What actually happened with the drones on that colony?” Geordi asks.

“XBs, not drones.” If it had a tired, sing-song-y lilt to it, could Hugh really be blamed? But it was weird correcting his oldest friend like that, his role model in so many things. Quite often, when at a fork in the road, Hugh had asked himself ‘ _what would Geordi do?_ ’. But they hadn’t actually met up a lot or anything of the sort, and now Hugh was having to explain the most basic realities of his life. “Well, almost none of them ended up staying there.”

When Geordi looked surprised at that, Hugh grinned and swatted a hand in his direction. “What did you think we were going to do, start homesteading? Borg drones – _I’m_ allowed to say it, it’s that kind of thing – tilling the soil? We ended up having trouble when our implants started deteriorating. Me and a small group of others cobbled a vessel together and struck out to find help with that.”

“With mixed results, I’m guessing,” Geordi said.

Hugh touched the implant on his brow. “What do you mean?”

“Well, that’s quite a scar.”

“Oh, yeah.” Honestly, he forgot frequently that it wasn’t supposed to be there. It was just the way his face looked, and had looked for many years. “I’d rather have a scar than that clunky old eye-piece, if you ask me.”

Just then, because history loves drama, the breeze carried faint voices towards their ears, voices coming closer to the Artifact.

“That’s the place, then? Whew, I wouldn’t want to be caught dead here.”

“Be nicer. Clearly a lot of work went into this.”

“Guys, these shoes are killing me.”

“Take them off, then. Seriously, Ley, who wears platform soles to the desert?”

“I can’t take them off. I sprung for these prosthetics, I will not get sand and mud and whatnot on them. They’re that good lifelike shit.”

“Folks, careful, don’t step on the mixed greens salad.”

“I never step on anything.”

“We know that, Cal.”

“I’m just saying, you don’t get those good-looking legs just anywhere. What, you guys think lifelike prosthetics grow on trees?”

Hugh froze. He knew those voices. He’d recognize that quality of bickering anywhere.

The voices in his mind... how had he not noticed? Most of it was the gentle background hum of everyday life, easy to tune out, easy to forget it was even there. But five of the voices were getting... louder.

Trimatrix 407 had arrived.

Beside him, Geordi chuckled – he actually chuckled! – demonstrating his complete ignorance of what was upon them. “They were on the flight here with us. Who are they?” he asked, amused.

Hugh let out a heartfelt sigh. “My friends,” he said.

And there they were. They’d barely changed. Six, who was supporting Ley, who seemed to be struggling indeed with her heels on the uneven surface, had gotten another few tattoos. Ley had had some more engravings done on her remaining implants, in her favorite sunflower pattern. Ellie’s dark hair had grown to her mid-back. Ada had dyed her hair henna-red. Cal had gotten a new, sleeker model of wheelchair, which now floated about ten inches off the ground. Apart from that, same old Trimatrix 407 bunch. Incredible, that they were all together here again, after so many years had gone by.

Six, the tallest, naturally spotted him first. “There he is,” he said, grinning (grinning? There hadn’t been much cause to grin when they had parted). “Loving the facial hair.”

“I hate the facial hair,” Ley said, never one to keep her opinion to herself. “Shave yesterday.”

They had stopped walking, a few yards away, creating a little no-man’s-land between the two groups, almost reminiscent of the manner of an Ancient West stand-off. Hugh felt his hands clench and unclench. “If you guys are here to lord it over me, I’m just not letting you into my cube.”

The five exchanged silent glances. “Lord it over you?” Ley asked.

“No, hon,” Ada said. “We’re here because you need help.”

The two groups now met. “How fortuitous,” Picard remarked. “I had no idea that all of you knew each other.”

“Yeah, we do. We’re Hugh’s former cubemates! Don’t you remember us, Admiral Picard?” Ley asked. When Picard’s face seemed to shutter for a second, she added, “No, not from that! We met at Lore’s dump of a planet!”

“ _You_ were the drones that Lore had under his command?” Geordi asked excitedly.

“XBs, not drones,” the five of them chorused.

“Fortune had nothing to do with it,” Six went on to say. “This is a social call we should have made many years ago.”

Hugh could only dread finding out what that meant.

Seven watched everything occur with a wry twist to her mouth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh they're idiots. All of them gay idiots.
> 
> Will Elnor and Hugh ever stop pining and start communicating? What is the deal with these five doofuses I made up? I have certainly given you a cliff to hang on. Well, at least Picard's still bald.


	4. Every Step That I Ran To You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In a feat of furious night writing I managed to complete this chapter before I return, tomorrow, to my apartment where there's still no wifi. Which will probably give me the time and leisure required to work intensively on the next one! Still, it'll be lonely with such severely reduced connections to the great outside, especially these days in times of Ms. Corona. But no matter. I just wanted to put this out there beforehand. Enjoy this monster of a chapter!
> 
> Six sings a showtune. Many of you might know it!

Hugh let Trimatrix 407 loose on the Artifact.

This was fine. He knew that, brash and loud as they could be, they also would be gentle with the recently reclaimed xBs here. They had felt all this before. They knew what it was like to start out as a blank slate. The great emptiness without the voices of the Collective, the confusion with every newly discovered aspect of a hostile outside world. Their presence would show the recently reclaimed more examples of what they could become: self-assured, self-actualized people with their lives in order, living their individual dreams.

Besides, meeting them would be good for the researchers. When one worked on reclaiming xBs for a while, day in and day out, one grew used to viewing them as hapless victims in perpetual need of care. Which was a step up from viewing them as soulless murder machines, a step which most of the galaxy hadn’t yet taken, but the fact was that many of the researchers had no frame of reference for the vast potential _and happiness_ that slumbered within every xB. The only fully self-possessed xB most of them knew was Hugh, who was aware that he was still living up to the busy drone stereotype a little. But there was no reason to go around establishing Borg stereotypes. XBs could be libertines like Ley and Six, scholars and thinkers like Ada, they could proudly own their Borg enhancements like Ellie and make a career out of them, or they could choose a wholly un-Borg-related vocation like Cal had. Seeing Ley turn heads as she entered the replimat, hearing Ada talk about her latest philosophical treatise or showing off her art, observing Six immediately unpacking his unfathomably annoying acoustic guitar in an attempt to charm some researchers via song, having Ellie pass around the pictures from her latest photoshoot with the sheer black prosthetic forearms, or hearing Cal introduce himself to everyone as “Morgan J. Calhoun of Calhoun, J’honn and Vreenak, Attorneys at Law” was eye-opening. It showed people just _what_ xBs could become. The possibilities were vast.

Seven and Raffi sat down with them, and were soon involved in a card game. After a bout of hesitance, Picard joined the group as well. This was probably good for him too, seeing other xBs leading vibrant lives, acting like people, robbing the Collective of some of its sting of fear. Beverly and Geordi (!!! Hugh still couldn’t quite believe he was seeing them again) were chatting to a medical team who had just dropped in for their lunch break. Elnor was observing the scene from a bit of a distance, leaning against a wall opposite the replicator, and Hugh played host for everyone, seeing to it that all their needs were met, in order to keep himself from observing Elnor.

Ada (she always got bored with poker quickly) left the table first, only to catch Hugh by the elbow and none-too-gently usher him aside. “Stop fretting over everyone and let’s talk,” she said curtly.

“Well, sure. How have you been? You look better,” Hugh said. “It’s great that you could make the trip.”

But Ada wasn’t here for small-talk, or to chat about her improved mental health. “It’s the guy with the sword then, huh?” she asked, not deigning nor having to elaborate.

“You came all the way here to talk about my love life?” Hugh replied.

“Your nonexistent love life? No; I thought I’d start with the easiest thing. You want me to go all in right away instead? Fine, here it is: you’re clearly unwell.”

“Oh, come on,” Hugh said. “I’m doing alright. Is this place not thriving?”

“This place, yes,” Ada said. “But _you_? And don’t you even think you can deny it. You realize there’s still a mental link between us all?”

“Yes,” Hugh admitted.

“Can you even fathom what we’ve been getting from your end? At first you almost _died_ , and it’s been a nearly unbroken stream of misery since. We’re all worried about you.”

Well, shit. There wasn’t really any pretense to be kept up around people who shared the inside of one's head. “So, yes, after seeing my project of many years blown to bits and my people slaughtered, I’m not perfectly peachy. You really had to come all this way to hear me say that?”

“ _No_ ,” Ada said. She didn’t get loud when she was irritated, her voice got quieter, but sharper. “We came all this way because _you almost died.”_

Hugh shrugged. “I’m… sorry?”

“Oh, you’re uniquely infuriating.” Ada gripped the wall beside them, as if for support. “And don’t you think we don’t know that you weren’t doing well even before all that shit started, you were just too damned stubborn and proud to reach out to us. Ideological differences aside, we almost lost you. You’ve been with us from the start and you almost weren’t anymore, and all of us too far away to do anything.”

She hugged him, suddenly and fiercely. Hugh reciprocated; it was as easy as it had always been. He’d had no idea that he was worrying his old friends so much.

“Hey, Ada!” Six shouted from the improvised poker table. “Stop whispering in the corner and get our grand liberator to come play with us!”

“He can have my seat,” Seven volunteered, getting up.

Hugh took his place at the table next to Six. Apart from him, Raffi, Picard, Beverly and Geordi were still playing. The rest of the group had dispersed.

“Oh dear,” Hugh said. “Poker? I barely ever played that before. Not sure I’ll remember any of the rules at all.”

“That’s okay.” Geordi smiled, that friendly I’ll-show-you-the-world-kiddo-smile. “We can explain them to you if you get lost.”

* * *

Elnor was standing by himself, for some reason unable to insert himself into the group. They didn't ask him to. He was stewing, in the dim corner of this mess hall, in his feelings. He’d just begun deliberating whether or not to get something from the replicator when Seven came sauntering over to him.

“Do we tell our good Admiral that Hugh counts cards?” she asked under her breath with a half-grin.

“Hmm? He does what?” Elnor asked.

“He uses that prosthetic eye to scan the cards to keep track of which ones are being dealt where,” Seven elaborated. “Which is cheating.”

Elnor strained to get a closer look at ~~that beloved face~~ what Hugh was doing. Was he imagining that or was there… a slight, almost imperceptible twitch of his right eye? The blue one?

“No,” he decided. “He said he never played this game before.”

“He was lying. It’s what we call a bluff.”

“Hugh does not lie,” Elnor protested.

“No kidding?” Seven said, unimpressed. “He’s a politician. Of course he lies. That wide-eyed little drone act? He can pull that on and off like a coat. And I know for a fact that he and his little posse used to have weekly poker nights. He told me.”

Elnor watched more closely. Right now, Hugh was peering down at his cards, looking innocently puzzled and, yes, wide-eyed. So this really was an act? There was much that Elnor didn’t know when it came to pretense and lies. There was much that Elnor didn’t know about Hugh, come to think of it.

Speaking of…

“You knew we would meet him here, right?” Elnor asked. “That’s why you wanted to come here in the first place.”

Seven hummed noncommittally.

“You knew he was alive all along, and didn’t tell me. I… wish I knew why that is,” Elnor said. It had been meant to sound… well, angry, maybe. But it just came out upset. Saddened.

“Shit,” Seven said. “You didn’t know? I was supposed to keep it to myself for a week or two, and by then… you seemed okay, so I figured _someone_ must have told you. I thought maybe Picard?”

“No. No one told me anything, not for the first time, I might say. Oh, don’t bother talking to Elnor, he won’t understand. Right? And I’ve not…” Elnor took a shaky breath. “…I’ve not been okay.”

“I…” Seven cleared her throat. “I figured if you weren’t okay, you’d tell someone. Absolute Candor and all that.”

“I have… not always been true to what I’ve been taught.” Elnor hung his head. “But… I feel that doesn’t excuse keeping me in the dark about something that important.” And there was something… something else in Seven’s statement that… didn’t make sense, wasn’t right. “You were supposed to keep this to yourself for a week? Why?”

For a moment, Seven seemed unsure what to say. She looked from Elnor to the poker table and back. “Look, I was only… this is something you need to discuss with Hugh himself. I just… if I had any idea that this was important to you, and that none of the others had let you know, I would’ve said something.”

“Of course it’s important to me!” Elnor could barely contain himself from stomping his foot. “Hugh was… he is…” Elnor felt himself blush, and looked back towards the table to evade Seven’s gaze. Back there, Hugh was raking in many of the plastic chips that had amassed in the middle of the table. He was grinning as the man named Geordi looked dumbfounded and Doctor Beverly hid a wide smile behind one of her hands. The tall, loud xB named Six, who was seated next to Hugh, clapped him on the shoulder in congratulations. The hand lingered there a moment too long.

“What do you know about this man?” Elnor asked Seven.

“Six? He’s in a band with one of the others. That means he makes music for a living,” Seven explained. With a profoundly deep sigh, she added, “His designation was Six of Ten. He’s altered it to… Six of _Nine_.”

It was something, but not quite what Elnor had meant to learn. He’d heard the man named Six play his instrument earlier, before the game had started. It was clear that he made music frequently. “Why is he touching Hugh in that way?”

For a strangely uncomfortable second, Seven didn’t answer. She gave Elnor a long, questioning, somehow calculating look, and Elnor felt squirmy inside, a feeling he couldn’t quite place. Like that one time he’d eaten bad viinerine as a child. Maybe he shouldn’t have had that fruit juice.

“They’re friends,” Seven said. “They’re both tactile people. They’ve had some history, if you mean that, but nothing serious, as far as I know. Why, what’s it to you?”

 _History_ , Elnor thought. He thought he knew what that meant. It was like Mother Evassa and Mother Superior Zani had _History_. Nothing in the present but respect and friendship, but in the past, _History_ lurked. And, in this the Zhat Vash in all their misguidedness had been right, _History_ could repeat itself.

“It is…” _Nothing._ There was an impulse there to say that it was nothing to him, he had just been asking out of interest, out of a desire to know more about the new people in the room, maybe. But that wasn’t his truth. “I’m not quite sure why, but it makes me feel uneasy.”

Seven huffed out a breath through her nose. Perhaps it was some kind of silent laugh. “Okay, you _need_ to talk to Hugh. And... just a hunch, but... maybe do it soonish, before Six of Nine lives up to his name.”

* * *

Elnor cornered Hugh once the game ended.

“What is it with people dragging me off into dark corners to have conversations today?” Hugh asked, a bit bemusedly, as Elnor did just that.

“We _must_ talk. I’d rather not do it in front of everyone.” Elnor placed his hands on Hugh’s shoulders. “I had no idea you had survived that day. Why was I not told? What have you been doing here?”

“What have I been doing here? Well, I’ve made a home here for the remaining xBs on this cube, which is my job.” This particular hallway they were standing in was quite secluded, and only dimly lit. Hugh felt flustered, caught on the wrong foot. Elnor’s hands on his shoulders were very warm, and very… present. “Wait, you were not told at all?” Hugh shook his head. A light dizziness had taken hold of him the moment Elnor had stopped him on his way out of the mess hall and almost bodily hauled him here.

He was standing so close. Their chests were almost touching. Hugh could almost smell him.

“No, I wasn’t told. It seems that Seven thought it… wouldn’t be _important_.” Elnor’s expressive mouth was pinched with some emotion Hugh couldn’t decipher right this moment. Wait. Expressive mouth? What was he thinking? Why was he staring at Elnor’s lips like an idiot? Oh stars above, he _could_ actually smell him. It was a pure, fresh scent, that put him in mind of pine needles.

“Well, of course she would think that. We barely know each other,” Hugh muttered distractedly. That scent was overwhelming. He wanted to lean in closer, bury his face against the side of Elnor’s neck, nuzzle that little sliver of exposed skin at his throat. Inhale that scent and never stop.

“She wasn’t here with us when… when it happened. She doesn’t know.”

There was so much conviction in Elnor’s eyes and voice. Mmmh. Just press his lips to that skin once. Maybe nibble, very lightly. Sink his canines just briefly into that spot just there, at the beautifully sloped column of his throat, that spot where the… assimilation tubules went.

_What?_

Hugh clenched his right hand around his left wrist, gripped so tightly it hurt. There were no tubules there, hadn’t been for twenty years. He was a Borg defanged. And clearly that was for the best. _What_ in all the galaxy was he thinking?

Ah, Elnor was still staring at him. He wanted an answer. “Know what?” Hugh asked. “Look, I’m sorry you weren’t informed.”

“ _You_ didn’t inform me either,” Elnor answered. “Why? I thought you were dead. I thought this for months! I bound myself to your cause. I have a duty towards you still, and no one even told me you were alive.”

“I…” It was such appealing rhetoric. Bound myself to your cause. A duty. Like in a fairytale. A beautiful knight in shining armor, and the like. Sword and all. Romantic. It certainly drew in that foolish side of Hugh, the part of him that hadn’t grown weary and jaded by a bleak, oppressive galaxy. But this sort of thing just didn’t happen to people like him, and the reality of it…

_“Wouldn’t the xBs be better off dead?”_

His shiny knight wasn’t made for this duty. Picard would take him away again, set him on a much more glamorous path: Picard’s own path. Swoop in, save the day, give the speech, be big heroes, swoop away again. It was people like Hugh who were left, when the heroes had warped away, with the shards and the cleanup, in the rarely-lauded darkness and the grime of it. No. Best to let Elnor walk in the light.

“I… appreciate all you did for me that day, but I didn’t think there was anything more to it. The whole duty thing, I mean.” Hugh took a step back, and another, feeling Elnor’s hands fall away. It physically hurt to lose that contact. “I apologize. There’s much about your culture that I don’t know. Now, excuse me, but I have to go… check on… some… research. Yes. It’s great that we had this conversation.”

And Hugh retreated, before he could say something truly idiotic.

* * *

Elnor was moping.

The conversation with Hugh had raised more questions than it had answered. It had all seemed so strange, so detached, like Hugh was only half there talking with him, while his thoughts were on something else. Probably either on that Six guy or the man named Geordi, ugh.

Elnor had experienced his share of being brushed off, on Vashti when his Many Mothers had been busy as well as on La Sirena. He didn’t normally dwell on it anymore, because otherwise he figured he’d just go around stewing in it forever. But being brushed off by Hugh smarted, somehow. Maybe because he’d never expected Hugh to be one of the people who did that.

A few days had passed since then. Hugh had spent _excessive_ amounts of time with the man named Geordi. He also hung around Seven and his other xB friends. He talked to Dr. Beverly and Picard. He talked to _everyone_ more than he even deigned to _look_ at Elnor. When Elnor tried again to catch him alone, he found some reason or other to leave quickly.

It felt so wrong. This was not how he had imagined… well, he had imagined nothing, considering the fact that he’d lived in the mistaken belief that Hugh was dead. But now that he wasn’t, Elnor felt that things shouldn’t be this way. He had pledged himself to Hugh. He should be his Qalankhai in all the proper ways, with him always, guarding him from harm, a protector, confidant and friend. And maybe a little more than that. But Hugh would barely even see him.

He unburdened his thoughts to Seven one balmy evening, as they were sitting on the wooden platform the xBs had built on the lake, their boots off, their feet dangling in the cool water. It was a perfect day coming to a perfect close, the sky awash with sunset colors, the air warm and carrying a hundred pleasing scents. It seemed unfair that this day should be so wonderful when Elnor felt such unrest inside.

“I don’t understand why Hugh will barely speak to me,” he bemoaned, earning him a sideways glance from Seven. “What did I do wrong? Is he upset with me? I just don’t understand.”

“It’s… not how I expected this would go either,” Seven admitted.

“I thought… well, the circumstances of our first meeting certainly weren’t ideal. But I thought we had… connected. That we had a kind of… understanding of each other.” Elnor sighed. “Now I understand nothing.”

Seven raised her one eyebrow. “An understanding? This… really means a lot to you, huh?”

“Yes! But no one else seems to see that!”

“Wow,” Seven said. “He’s an idiot.”

“Don’t say that,” Elnor almost snapped. “Hugh is _so_ smart.”

(Just the other day, Elnor had been lurking… no, hovering, no, he had coincidentally been in the room to overhear a discussion between Hugh and the man named Geordi. Geordi had asked a question about Hugh’s work with the xBs, which had set Hugh off into a lengthy explanation.

“As you might imagine, Borg – the language – doesn’t have the first person singular,” Elnor had overheard Hugh saying. “The Collective as a whole is ‘we’. A singular drone, as far as that concept even exists within the Collective, is also ‘we’ – you encountered that when you first met me. But there is an awareness that the Collective is made up of many singularly-bodied units who can get hurt, who can die, who even age while fully assimilated. Otherwise there wouldn’t be a need for individual drone designations. Now—”

“The Borg have a language?” the man named Geordi had asked, blinking in surprise.

“Well, yes. It is a bastardized thing, cobbled together from the most serviceable parts of the languages of all assimilated – but then, so is Standard, isn’t it?” Hugh had grinned, the man named Geordi had made a half-amused, half-incredulous little sound. Evidently, Hugh’s question hadn’t been a question at all, but a wry joke. Elnor hadn’t gotten the joke.

“What I was getting at,” Hugh had continued, “is that while the Borg language and Borg glyph remain serviceable for intra-community communications, alterations need to be made to suit the purposes of self-actualized xBs. For example… people keep asking me for my take on Wolf 359, if I was there, et cetera.”

“The hell they do,” Geordi had said.

“They very much do. And it’s a question that requires a multi-faceted answer, because, well, was I, the person, there? No, because this person that I am hadn’t even begun existing yet. What they mean to ask, without even fully realizing it, is whether I was there as a drone. In my case, the answer is also no. I, as in this drone, was still in a maturation chamber at the time it happened, back at the Unicomplex in the delta quadrant. It's just an example. But you see what I mean? There is a distinction required between these two different types of ‘I’. The drone I was is different from the person I am now, but it’s still the entity that has inhabited my body.” Hugh had shrugged. “It’s difficult to even express in Standard. Maybe we’ll have to make up another pronoun.”

“It’s nobody’s business if you were or weren’t at Wolf 359 as a drone,” Geordi had said heatedly. “Even if you had been there, that wouldn’t have been _you_.”

Hugh had waved his hand in an affirmative gesture. “Thank you, Geordi, there is also that. But the xB community is small and slow-growing, so to many people, I’m the first ex-Borg they’ll meet. They implicitly ask me to speak for all the ex-Borg. Maybe even for the Collective. In such moments, what I say is what ‘the xBs’ say. I can’t just tell them I’m not responsible and I don’t care to be associated with the event. I have to say I’m very sorry, and the xBs I know would never, and we are a peaceful people with no interest in assimilating anything, and on and on.”

“That’s hardly fair on you,” Geordi had said.

Hugh had shrugged again. “That’s the way it is. Representation is my lot in life. I could choose to fade from the public eye like Seven, but that’s not my path.”

“You’ve really… really come far, kiddo.” Geordi had smiled, and shaken his head almost in disbelief.

Hugh had looked tired. “I’m not a child, Geordi,” he’d said. “I don’t think I was ever a child.”

The point was, Hugh was sharp. Listening to him like this, Elnor felt simple, unrefined. What could he contribute to Hugh’s cause? What, apart from his skill with his sword, did he truly have to offer?)

“No, I know him. He’s still an idiot,” Seven said, back in the present. “There’s a certain kind of stupid that comes from thinking too much. If Hugh stopped doing that for a second and just saw what’s right in front of him, he would be better off.”

Elnor wasn’t sure he got to the bottom of that. “Will you talk to him about that?” he asked.

Seven shook her head. “He’ll brush me off. Like he did the first time we discussed this.”

“Then what am I supposed to do?” Elnor asked her, beginning to feel a tad desperate. “Are you telling me that this is hopeless?”

“You like hopeless causes, don’t you?” Seven patted his shoulder. “I’m telling you that I can’t clear this mess up for you. Only you can do that. You just have to keep trying.”

Elnor nodded, feeling his resolve return. If Seven thought there was no hope, he knew that she would tell him outright. But she hadn’t.

_Keep trying._

* * *

Apart from the Hugh situation, Elnor enjoyed his time planetside. He enjoyed space travel as well, but there was something to be said for the warmth of a real sun and solid ground under his feet. Coppelius was mostly scrubland and sand, which reminded him of the places he'd once called home, both Vashti and Romulus. With his now ample supply of free time, he liked to take walks to explore his surroundings, or find nice spots to practice his swordsmanship, or simply sprawl in the sun and let the warmth permeate him to his very bones. He didn’t have much to do here while everyone was busy at either the station or the cube.

It seemed like while the ban that had disallowed Soji and her people to exist at all was now lifted, there was still a lot to do. Treaties, laws and rights… Elnor didn’t quite understand it, but it kept Picard, Soji and Dr. Jurati very busy with the Synths and Doctor Soong. Beverly and the man named Geordi split their time evenly between that project and the cube.

On the cube, Seven and Hugh’s other xB friends were apparently also about treaties, laws and rights, just this time for the xBs. Often, the two groups would meet and compare notes, gathering until late in the night with food, drinks, music and stories to help them along. Elnor enjoyed these gatherings even as there was little for him to contribute; he sat and listened and tried to learn, or hung back with Raffi and Captain Rios, the only other people here without personal stakes and goals to achieve. For them it was like shore leave, a holiday. But often, Raffi would enter the inner circle, not so much to debate with them but simply to rest her head on Seven’s shoulder and steal sips of her drink. Then, when one of the xBs – the tidy one in the floating wheelchair - beckoned Rios over with a “Captain Rios, do tell us more about your holograms. Would you consider them sapient beings?” Elnor again felt a little alone.

When he got lonely like this, he’d just watch Hugh. Hugh had been quiet at first, on the fringe of these long talks, but Seven had all but strong-armed him into the fray. Now he was looking livelier with each passing day, smiling more, raising his voice. It warmed Elnor’s heart to see; he only wished there was a way for him to share in this process of healing.

On this particular morning, he was walking from the station, where he slept for now, to the Artifact when he saw what appeared like the usual group of people gathered there. They were also going somewhere, heading away from the lake and further into the scrubland. Hugh was there, at the head of the little assembly, as were the other xBs, including Picard, and Soji. Elnor quickened his steps and joined up with them. Nobody seemed to mind.

They didn’t walk a large distance from the cube. Soon they reached a spacious, flat expanse of sandy ground, protected from the elements by large rocks on all sides, creating a tiny valley. Amidst the barren space, someone had stuck a piece of the Artifact’s dark tritanium hull into the ground, as if marking something. Around this marker, someone had piled flowers, little bouquets and wreaths tied with colorful scraps of ribbon. There were other items too: a worn quilt, a little wooden figurine, an old medical tricorder, and a few more.

“It’s here,” Hugh said. “The xBs leave these flowers and things here, for their friends. I didn’t tell them to, it’s just… something they started doing.”

“Thank you for showing us this,” the woman named Ley said, uncharacteristically subdued.

 _This is a gravesite_ , Elnor realized. _This is where they buried them… all the xBs that fell on the cube._

He took a closer look at the piece of metal. Someone had carved letters in there, in Standard and what Elnor assumed was the Borg glyph he’d heard Hugh mention. It was a list of names, names chosen by people on the verge of starting a new life, and the Borg designations of those who hadn’t even gotten to do that.

“Well… do we say a few words?” the xB in the floating chair asked.

All of them, including Hugh and Seven, looked at each other in mutual uncertainty. “What can we possibly say?” another xB, the one with the long black hair – her profession was something Elnor had never heard of called ‘prothesis model’ – asked.

Elnor watched them with interest. The Qowat Milat had funeral rites – for fellow Qalankhai, for their charges, for civilians – and he knew of other Romulan faith groups who buried their dead in different ways. The xBs seemed to have nothing of the sort. The Qowat Milat had existed for centuries, Elnor had learned at the convent, and therefore had, in their long history, established many rituals and ways of life. The first xBs were only twenty-odd years reclaimed. They had existed for as long as Hugh – the person, not the drone-body – had existed. They were newly a race, but only just becoming a group, a community, a… culture. There was no code of conduct yet in place for How We Do Things. They were making it up as they went along. How do xBs honor their dead? It was going to be decided now.

Ada, who had drawn a picture of Elnor’s face back on La Sirena, cleared her throat. “Maybe there’s nothing we can say. We all know what happened here. We all wish this would not happen again, but we know it probably will. There is nothing our words at this moment in time and space can do to improve this situation. All we can do is mourn these people, who died before we got to properly meet them.”

No one had any reply to that. The xBs stood in silence, and everyone understood what was happening and did the same. Hugh and his five cubemates clasped hands, their faces solemn. Seven’s hands were clenching and unclenching at her sides. Soji looked at the ground. Sympathy nestled in every wrinkle of Picard’s venerable face. Elnor felt a lump in his throat.

He had been there on the day these people had died. Maybe if he’d been faster, acted sooner, done more somehow, he would have been able to save them. There would not have to be a grave in the desert, and Hugh and his friends would not have to puzzle over how to make up a funeral rite.

The minute of silence passed. Then Six took a deep breath in. Elnor half-expected him to now attempt to lighten the mood with a smile, a joke, maybe another attempt to hit on Hugh. But his face was solemn as he began to sing.

He had a nice voice, it carried far across the sand. The song was unlike any Elnor had heard at the monastery or on Captain Rios’s record player. If anything, it sounded like the kind of music he suspected Picard might be interested in.

_Do you hear the people sing_

_Lost in the valley of the night_

_It is the music of a people who are climbing to the light_

_For the wretched of the Earth_

_There is a flame that never dies_

_Even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise_

Elnor glanced at Picard as the song continued. Picard looked at Six in astonishment, looking like whatever this was, he hadn’t expected it. Ley now joined the singing, then Ada.

_Will you join in our crusade_

_Who will be strong and stand with me_

_Somewhere beyond the barricade is there a world you long to see_

_Do you hear the people sing_

_Say do you hear the distant drums_

_It is the future that they bring when tomorrow comes_

Elnor wasn’t sure what it meant, but it had turned from a lament into something hopeful, something… rousing. In this moment he felt a sense of… readiness, like it was time to grasp his sword and enter into some skirmish, to defend something. By the time the voices fell silent, the five xBs were still holding hands. Hugh was crying quietly, not making a sound as his tears fell.

Elnor didn’t think of Seven telling him to keep trying. He wasn’t trying anything. His only thought was that it was a shame that Hugh should stand there with his back straight and cry quietly, almost as though he didn’t want to make a fuss. Elnor felt reminded of that day on the Artifact, when he had found Hugh kneeling by the bodies of his slaughtered people. He’d heard sobs before that moment – sounds that had wrenched brutally at his heart – but that numb and silent state in which he’d found Hugh at last had been worse.

He went to Hugh as the xBs ceased holding on to each other, put a hand on his shoulder, just like he had then. At first, Hugh made no move, like he wasn’t even feeling the touch. But then, for just a moment, he leaned into Elnor’s embrace, as if finally permitting himself to receive the comfort. Elnor wanted to do more, to reach out his hand and wipe Hugh’s tears away, but he didn’t dare. He stood and received the minimal point of contact he was being given. They stayed that way until Picard beckoned to Elnor, motioning to give the xBs some space.

* * *

Hugh was distantly aware that he’d gone far away for a moment, into the past to the cause of his grief, only to be brought out of it, once again, by Elnor’s hand. Feeling it warm and solid on his shoulder, breathing in Elnor’s nice pine tree scent, grounded him, anchored him in the present. But Elnor left eventually, taking his warmth with him. When Elnor had gone, and Picard had cordially escorted Seven and Soji back to the cube, Ley and Six stepped closer, rather hesitantly for people who had shared his mind for more than twenty years.

“What is it with that sword guy, huh?” Six asked, maybe a bit nervously, trying to lighten things up, as was his way. “What’s the story? Because there’s something there.”

Hugh wiped his eyes. “None of your business.”

Silence reigned for a second. Then Ley cleared her throat. “We wanted to tell you… from all of us…”

“Told you so?” Hugh guessed.

“What?” Ley crossed her arms. “Hugh, if you think I have it in me to stand at a mass grave of our people, whom you watched die, and say _told you so_ …”

“But you did,” Hugh said bitterly. “You told me it would end badly with the Romulans. That I shouldn’t take on the project. I didn’t listen.”

It had been the reason for their little friend-breakup. When the Federation had offered Hugh the Executive Director position on the Artifact, it had of course come attached to the sizeable caveat that any xBs he liberated on that cube would be living under custody of the Romulans, and what that meant, no one had known. The Romulans hadn’t deigned to tell what their interest in the Artifact had been. Ostensibly, they’d been there to help their liberated brethren reintegrate into their society, but at the same time, the disdain most Romulans harbored for any form of synthetic or partially synthetic life had been well-known. The disparity had been a gaping chasm. If the Romulans considered the xBs nameless, soulless abominations, why would they want to take any of them home? The Trimatrix 407 bunch had theorized that they were meaning to profit off the tech, or abuse xBs for slave labor. The Romulan Empire had practiced slavery; it wasn't that unlikely. Or maybe they’d only wanted to make a show of strength in the Neutral Zone.

Ley, Ada and Six had argued vehemently against Hugh accepting the post under these circumstances, but no alternatives could be offered. The Romulan Free State would not be enticed by any Federation offers to negotiate for anything else. The project as a joint venture was to be run on their terms or not at all. The cube having been found in the once again hotly contested Neutral Zone had made the situation highly politically charged. All this hadn’t hinged on Hugh; if he had said no, another Federation supervisor could have been found.

But Hugh had not been confident at all that there was anyone else he trusted to do this. No one knew the xBs and their needs like he did. He was, in the quite literal sense, writing the book on deassimilation. If he’d not taken the job, he might well have abandoned the xBs on the Artifact to ceaseless abuse, neglect and harassment. He’d quite simply been the only one interested in going in to soften the blow for them.

“Soften the blow,” Ley had sneered. “Good men following bad orders given by bad people. Oh yes, history shows us this has _always_ brought about _positive_ change.” Her words had been dripping with sarcasm. Ley wasn’t only an underground singer with the attitudes of a diva. She had read widely on sociopolitical topics. It was what made her song lyrics so poignant.

“Well, what else am I supposed to do?” Hugh had argued back. “It’s all good and well sitting here talking about revolution, but at the end of the day, one has to buckle down and do something for the vulnerable people who exist here and now.”

“Don’t you see, they’re trying to shut you up,” Ada had said. “You’ve made yourself a tad too obnoxious to the Federation board petitioning them for our rights. Now they’re shunting you off to the Neutral Zone where you’ll be out of sight and out of mind. The real battle is right here, in San Fran.”

Hugh couldn’t have denied it, but the fact remained that he’d needed to go. From there they’d gotten into respectability politics, and tempers had risen until Six had shouted, “You care so much about getting everyone in the Federation to like you _so much all the time_ , you’re willing to throw your own people under the bus for it!”

…And after that, they hadn’t spoken for a while. Hugh had, with a heavy heart, gone to the Neutral Zone, and after his departure, the rest of the group had drifted apart. Ada had meant to continue on with the movement in his stead, but her health hadn’t permitted an existence in the limelight. Feeling the detrimental effects of the constant public scrutiny on her mental health, she’d retired to her art and writing philosophical treatises from the comfort of their once shared apartment. Ley and Six had taken off touring with their band. Ellie had taken on a modelling contract with Utopia Cosmetica, who had been on the lookout for somebody to show off their line of high-end prosthetic limbs. Cal had already been practicing law at that time, (to think that he’d originally pursued this to keep the young movement out of legal trouble!) and took over watching Ada on her off days, when their shared trauma overwhelmed her to the point of catatonia. Apart from the regular check-ups over their mind link, a leftover gift from Mommy Collective, they hadn’t interacted. None of the Trimatrix 407 crew had been to the Artifact at all until now.

“It doesn’t matter now who said what and who did or didn’t listen,” Ada said softly. “All I know now is that we watched you get worse for years and years, and we watched you almost die, and we may have had different opinions on how to do things, but you’re still our friend. We should have never stood by, and we’re sorry.”

“Apology accepted,” Hugh said. “But I’m not sure what you’re talking about. I wasn’t… ‘getting worse for years’.”

“Really?” Ellie said. She wasn’t usually a talker, and when she did say something, it often hit home in a way one rarely appreciated in the moment. “Have you looked at you lately?”

“Ever since you started living on the Artifact,” Ada said softly, grasping Hugh’s hands, “all we got from you over the mind link was misery, resignation and stress.”

Well, when she put it like that. Hugh hadn’t exactly had a wonderful time on the Artifact, with traumatic memories permeating the whole cube, the dreariness of the environment as such, the feeling of being cut off from all his friends lightyears away from them in the Neutral Zone, the endless, drudging nature of the work and the discrimination by the Romulans. He supposed everyone would feel a little down when dealing with all that.

“What am I supposed to say to that?”

“You needn’t say anything,” Ada said gently. She gestured back towards the way they’d come. “We should go back before we all catch sunstroke.”

As they were walking back to the cube, Hugh noticed that without giving any conscious thought to it, they had clustered in their old group formation, the way they’d always walked together before they’d gone their separate ways: Ada next to Cal, a hand resting on the backrest of his wheelchair, Hugh squeezed between Ley and Six, who both had a whole head of height on him, and Ellie to Ley’s other side. This way they had stood together when they’d been younger, arms wrapped around each other, huddled tight to ward off a universe that meant to butcher them for parts, exploit them for kicks or put them down for crimes that drones with their bodies might or might not have committed. This was how it had been. Trimatrix 407 against the world.

Six put a hand on Hugh’s shoulder. “You know what we should do?” he asked. “We should celebrate.”

Hugh cocked his head. “Celebrate what?”

“Look, we’re making up our own traditions, right? Personally, I like the ones where they honor the dead with a huge party. Stars above know we need something like that. Also, we’re reunited! That calls for partying. Ley and I can make some music, we can have drinks, we can invite everyone… and who knows? Maybe _someone_ might even want to make a move on certain doe-eyed Romulans that might be around.”

Hugh swatted at his arm. “Stop.”

“Do something, and soon, or I might shoot my shot for myself,” Six threatened playfully.

Hugh bristled. “You? What would Elnor want from you?”

“I don’t know. But it never hurts to ask.” Six grinned. “You know me. I’m Six of Nine, baby!”

In the most put-upon voice available to him, Hugh grudgingly admitted, “I’ve missed you.”

* * *

They had almost reached the Artifact when Ada said, “Listen, maybe you should talk again to your Dr. Crusher. Maybe she can recommend you a therapist. One who’d work with xBs. I’m sure if anyone here knows their way around the Federation medical community, it’s her.”

“A therapist. Sure.” Hugh nodded. He looked around for a diversion. “Oh, is that Soji over there? I haven’t had a chance to talk to her in any depth since all the craziness happened.”

“You’re painfully transparent,” Ley remarked, but Hugh had already turned his back and started walking.

Soji was sitting by herself on a cubical piece of debris that had broken off the Artifact in the crash and bored into the ground. She was watching the gardens, a contemplative look on her face. The heat didn’t seem to bother her. Even most of the xBs usually went inside at this time of day and replicated some cool drinks. Hugh felt his own hairline damp with sweat, even having ditched most of his heavy uniform for lighter clothes in the Synthville style weeks ago when most other aspects of his life had also begun unravelling.

He approached Soji now. “Hi. I hope I’m not interrupting.”

Soji looked up at him. “No, it’s okay. Just thinking.”

“Don’t you want to get out of the sun?”

“I’m fine. I was…” Soji sighed, “…programmed to adjust my internal temperature. I’m good in any weather. What about you? I thought the Borg operated in hot and humid climates.”

“The Borg, yes. I’ve had climate control peeled off twenty years ago.” And he’d have to do the same with his current shirt, Hugh mused idly. Borg drones never sweat. Twenty years ago, he wouldn’t have had this problem. He was starting to understand why some xBs were opting for keeping even some of their non-essential implants around. “Mind if I sit?”

She gestured to go ahead, so Hugh simply plopped down beside her on the sand.

“So, how have you been doing, what with… everything?” he asked. “I haven’t had a chance to catch up with you on things ever since you disappeared through that spatial trajector with Picard.”

“I’m doing okay.” Soji sounded a bit defensive as she said that. “What’s it to you?”

Hugh gave her a half-grin. “Just checking. You never quit here and I certainly haven’t fired you, which makes you my employee still, technically. And that means I’m responsible.”

Soji huffed a little laugh and shook her head. “You’re mother-henning again, that’s all. Or worse yet, you’re running around finding people to fix hoping it’ll throw everyone off _your_ trail. Including yourself.”

It hit a little too close to home for comfort. Mother hen, huh? Was that how the researchers perceived Hugh? “Why did I let you hang out with the psychiatrists?”

Soji put a hand on her chest, mock-offended. “Please. To an anthropologist such as myself, you’re a petri dish.” Suddenly, her smile dimmed. “That’s just the thing, though, isn’t it?”

“What is?” Hugh asked.

“I’m not an anthropologist, am I? I’m an android programmed with the knowledge of someone with an anthropology degree. Accepting that… has been weird, and hard.” Soji absentmindedly wiped a strand of hair from her face. “The degree I thought I worked my ass off for… it’s not real. I never did the work. I’ve got the data, I’ve got the capabilities, I’ve got the skill, but it feels unearned.”

“Hmmm.” Hugh cocked his head. Now this was an interesting quandary. How would he choose to cope with that in her place? “The skills that your creators gave to you… you could see them as a gift.”

“Maybe,” Soji said. “But it goes deeper than that. Is my _interest_ in anthropology also a result of my programming? The fulfillment I experienced working here?” She gestured at the Artifact. “My involvement in watching the xBs make progress? How much of my personality is a result of my programming? I know Doctor Soong and Doctor Maddox needed to smuggle me in here so I could talk to Ramdha and gather information on the Admonition and the Zhat Vash. So they _made me_ the kind of person who would earn a position here. Now that that mission is over, I just don’t know what to do with myself.”

“Doesn’t Picard keep you busy on his team of spacefaring misfits?” Hugh asked.

Soji gave him that small, hesitant smile again. “Well, yeah. But as amazing as it is, exploring the galaxy with them, it feels like… like a long vacation. Some sort of sabbatical for me to figure things out. I’ll have to decide what I’ll do with my life someday. ‘Spacefaring misfit’ isn’t a real job. And I’m just wondering if I want to use those skills I already have and continue working in xenoanthropology, or if I want to start over completely, learn something new. Something that wasn’t programmed into me, that’s just… me.”

“Well, you can take as long as you need to make that choice,” Hugh said. “And if you pick something else and it doesn’t work out, you’ll always have your knowledge of xenoanthropology as a fallback. But if it helps you to know… you may not have chosen your career for yourself up until now, but your work on the Artifact? Your integrity and empathy and kindness towards the xBs? Those were all you. Those were choices you made every day when you came into work. You didn’t need to be kind to get the work done, but you chose to. No one can take that from you. I certainly won’t forget it.”

Soji wrapped the strand of hair around her pointer finger. “So I showed your people some basic decency. That’s the bare minimum, Hugh. That’s easy.”

“To be friendly with an ex-Borg? Not many people would posit that that’s easy.”

Soji shook her head. “You’re trying to cheer me up and on some level it’s working. I like the thought that I’m a good person. But at the same time it’s also sort of depressing how deeply fucked up you are.”

Hugh laughed, surprised that she would speak her mind so frankly. “You think so?”

“I mean… the circumstances.” Soji gestured with her hands, looking a bit flustered. “You really think I’m extraordinary in some way because I was nice to you? You as a group, I mean. I’ve read into your background before I came to the Artifact – or, well, I guess Doctors Soong and Maddox read into your background and gave me the information. The short history of the xBs is always… there’s always this debate of destruction versus exploitation. I can only imagine the shared trauma this inflicted and is still inflicting. And obviously, _the xBs_ means _you_ , as a person. All your life you’ve been handed from one person or group meaning to exploit you to the next. Of course you rarely get common decency around here but it shouldn’t be that way.”

“I sure love the thought of A. I. knowing this about me,” Hugh said, more to himself than to Soji. “But don’t you see, what you just said is exactly to my point. You’ve taken the input you received and extrapolated based on your emotional reaction and personal principles, and you’ve concluded it’s an outrage how we’re treated (which it is). That makes you much more than the sum of your programming, Soji.”

“You’re… not going to react at all to the ‘you’re fucked up’ part?”

“No.” Hugh pushed a hand through his sweaty hair. “What use would that do?”

* * *

On his way back to the Artifact, Hugh ran into Naáshala, whom he tasked with convincing Soji to exit her brooding spot. Naáshala had been a wonderful colleague, and he felt he owed her one, and he knew she was too shy to approach Soji on her own. Who knew what could happen if they spent more time together?

Content in having potentially matchmade, Hugh entered the cube and made his way to the mess hall, where he replicated some iced coffee for himself. Just as he was taking it from the exit slot, Beverly Crusher entered the room. Her face lit up as she saw him, and she approached immediately. He liked that about her. Even at the very beginning of their acquaintance, Hugh remembered, she had never shown fear of him.

“I was hoping I could find you here,” she said. “We haven’t properly talked since I got here! I think that’s a shame.”

“I’d be glad to talk.” Hugh gestured for her to sit down at one of the unoccupied tables. He was supposed to be above all that by now, he knew, but a tiny part of him fluttered happily at one of the former Enterprise crew wanting to spend time with him.

Beverly smiled at him. “I’ve been having a look around this facility, talking to the doctors and scientists on site here, seeing the reclamation process for myself… and I’ve got to say, it’s highly impressive what you’ve accomplished here.”

Hugh tried not to preen too obviously at the praise. “Thank you,” he said in what he hoped was a calm, measured tone. “Of course we’re only laying the groundworks for what is going to be a generation-spanning process.”

“Well, someone has to start it,” Beverly replied. “And if there’s any way for me to help, I’d be honored to.”

“Really?”

“Yes, of course.” She smiled, leaning forward conspiratorially. “In fact, I feel like I’ve been waiting for a chance to take on a new project. Something I could really be… utilized in.”

Hugh nodded. “Any contribution you’d be able to make would be most welcome. You’re the one who performed the first deassimilations known to history – first with Admiral Picard and then myself. I’m certain the researchers here would feel honored to have your input.”

Beverly laughed. “You’re making it sound like I’d have something of vast importance to contribute. I’m sure you’ve run rings around me in the time you’ve been working on this cube.”

“As a matter of fact…” Hugh ducked his head, a bit self-conscious with what he was about to say. “The work here made me think about you frequently. I still remember how you stuck up for me when I first came aboard the Enterprise. I was up to my ears in the Collective still, but I do remember your advocacy for me, and the multiple times you’d show me kindness. Those were the first kind words I’d ever heard.”

“Oh, Hugh…” Beverly said softly.

“Of course Geordi was a catalyst for me finding my new identity, but your own role cannot be overstated. I have… hoped your treatment of me has informed my own attitude towards the xBs under my care.”

“It’s always wonderful to know you have helped someone,” Beverly said. “It’s in itself rewarding that way.”

“Oh, yes.” Hugh nodded vigorously.

“But to hear you say that I’ve had a part in inspiring all this…” She gestured around the room, encompassing the cube, the Reclamation Project as a whole, “It’s… enormous, and it’s magnificent.”

“Whatever laurels I may have earned, they’re yours too,” Hugh said with a bow of his head. “And Geordi’s. And so many other people’s. What I am, what I represent is a composite of everyone I ever met. I’ve learned that even outside the Collective, the individual in complete isolation does not exist, and isn’t a concept that should be strived for.”

“No man is an island.” Beverly nodded thoughtfully. “This is not at all a Borg-exclusive sentiment. You find it in human history and culture as well.”

“Most sapient species we know of are social creatures to some extent,” Hugh said. “Anyone who’s arguing otherwise is most likely approaching me in bad faith.”

There was a moment of companionable silence in which they both just sipped their coffees.

Then Beverly said, “And yet I hear you’ve been building yourself a shell of sorts here to retreat into.”

Something in Hugh that had felt relaxed and light up until this moment tensed. “That’s hardly been my objective here. This place is going to be a kind of home base, something many xBs have long dreamed of. A place to fall back to, if needed. A place they can go home to.”

“And yet I remember you telling Geordi just the other day that you wouldn’t start homesteading.”

“I’m not,” Hugh clarified. “Not for myself, anyway. Once this place can run by itself, I’ll be moving on to the next thing.”

“Do you know what the next thing will be yet?” Beverly asked.

“I don’t know.” Her probing was starting to put him on edge. “Something will come along. There’s so much work left to do.”

Her tone was just that tiny bit less gentle and conversational, more like that of a doctor, when she said, “I’d assume counselling first.”

“Yes, I guess so.”

“You really should get yourself sorted out before you tackle your next project.”

“You’re probably right. But really, I’m handling myself fine.” The insomnia and night terrors notwithstanding, Hugh did not add. Apart from the fact that he still saw the flashes of disruptor fire when he closed his eyes, and then saw the corpses, and relived that dreadful feeling of all these voices in the mind-link going silent. He had absorbed enough psychology to really be without a doubt certain that he wasn’t fine. But leaving here still seemed a large and daunting step, and counselling… opening it all back up…

“Thank you so much for the advice.” Hugh finished his coffee and got up. “I really should go now, though, I have a lot to do before that party they’re having tonight.”

It was a lie, Hugh had nothing to do. The day-to-day life on the cube was running smoothly these days, rendering him almost superfluous. The Trimatrix 407 bunch had taken over all the party-planning. It was quite simply that Hugh didn’t want to stay here and discuss this any longer.

He found himself back outside on the shore of the lake. He started walking away from the Artifact, where he was sure to be alone for a moment.

That was when he saw Elnor.

Inwardly, he cursed. Elnor had been all over the place lately, tormenting Hugh with his very alluring presence. It was hard to stay distant and professional when Elnor was right there, being adorable, looking stunning while basking in the sun. Hugh would have assumed he was doing it on purpose to torture him if that weren’t completely nonsensical.

Elnor was training with his sword – his _tan qalanq_ , Hugh heard it was called (coincidentally. Not at all because he’d asked Ramdha for any information she could recall on the Qowat Milat one slow afternoon). He was completely absorbed in the exercise, believing himself alone, unobserved. He had shed the blue outer robe he was always wearing; now his arms were bare. He was in the middle of a series of complex movements, and he seemed to have been at it for a while, out in the sweltering sun, yet he hadn’t broken a sweat. Not a hair was out of place. Hugh couldn’t say the same for himself as he watched the gleaming arcs of the sword through the air, the practiced ease and elegance of Elnor’s movements, the roll of his muscles, the concentration on his face. Hugh found he couldn’t tear his eyes away from the sight. Distractedly, he registered his heart picking up speed. He had _just_ rehydrated – could still taste the iced coffee on his tongue – and yet he felt parched. Parched and flushed and _alight_ in a way he hadn’t felt in a long, long time.

This was just the sort of distraction he normally didn’t make time for. The work came first. The occasional twitch of libido got ignored more often than not, immediately crushed under a mountain of paperwork. It was nice to know that he had the ability (the Borg had certainly never afforded their drones this) but Hugh didn’t often see a need to do something about it. He and Six had gone at it a few times back when they’d been younger, but that was in the distant past now. Six had gone on to find plenty of dissipation without Hugh’s help, and Hugh, well, Hugh had gone to the Neutral Zone. Starting anything with the researchers on the Artifact would have been inappropriate, the xBs under his care were right out, and the Romulans had been off-limits. And that, Hugh told himself sternly, went for _this_ Romulan as well.

But oh, that willowy frame, those arms, the strength in them… those hands, grasping the hilt of the sword… if only, if only…

He took a shaky breath in. Apparently this was too loud a noise to make, because Elnor stopped and turned his head Hugh’s way.

“Oh,” he said.

Hugh said nothing. He was aware that his mouth opened and closed in a goldfish-like manner, but there just wasn’t anything to be done about that, was there now?

“Apologies,” Elnor added. “I didn’t see you.”

“It’s fine,” Hugh said. The air seemed to have been sucked out of his lungs, or perhaps out of the area in general somehow, because the atmosphere between them felt breathless. “I was looking for a… spot to be alone.”

Why had he said that? To ensure Elnor that he hadn’t been watching on purpose?

Elnor sheathed his sword. “I can remove and practice elsewhere, if you require it.”

“No, I’ll just keep going this way.” Hugh gestured to approximately any direction but the one he’d come from. “You just… continue training. Pretend I was never here.”

“I don’t mind you looking at me,” Elnor said.

_Huh???_

“At the convent, my Many Mothers would often observe my training,” Elnor continued.

 _Oh. Right,_ Hugh thought. _This has no connotations beyond the platonic, not to him._

“It certainly seemed… impressive,” Hugh said. There, a nice, emotionally neutral adjective. “You’re very… skilled.”

Elnor somehow stood up even straighter. “Thanks. I train hard. It’s a skill that must be kept well-honed. Like her – or his – blade, a Qalankhai is not to lose their edge.”

“Makes sense,” Hugh said for lack of anything else to say.

“Because I am a man, I can never fully join the order of the Qowat Milat,” Elnor went on to say, a little bit non-sequitur. “But their teachings are good and their way of life noble, and they can still apply to me. Even without officially joining the order, I can do what a Qalankhai does.” A strange undertone snuck into his voice, one that Hugh couldn’t quite decipher. “I know I can be a good Qalankhai. I can ably serve… a cause.”

“I don’t doubt it,” Hugh said, wondering internally what this was all about. A bit wistful, he added, “Whatever you apply yourself to will be better for having you contribute to it.”

And, before he could say something very stupid again, he nodded at Elnor by way of goodbye and went off to stick his head in a sand dune somewhere.

* * *

Elnor was about ready to chuck his sword on the ground and go drown himself in the lake. How could Hugh be like this? So inscrutable, keeping his thoughts and feelings so close to his chest, and yet… Elnor had seen Hugh’s eyes on him. Not many people – maybe no one at all – had ever looked at him in quite that way, but he instinctually knew what it meant. Even with the brusque way Hugh had ended their conversation, that look in his eyes gave Elnor hope again.

 _He wants me,_ Elnor thought. _He wants me and he does not know what to do with his want._

* * *

More secure now that he knew he was being wanted, Elnor walked back to the station to rejoin the others. In the main square, some Synths and Hugh’s xB friends were busy setting up for the celebration that was to be had here in the evening. Elnor asked if he could help, but was told that they were doing fine, thank you very much. Inside the main building, in a large living area that branched off to the rooms they all slept in, most of La Sirena’s crew was gathered. It appeared that, while most of them would just attend the party as they were, at least some were doing something a little special. Doctor Jurati was squinting into a mirror attempting, with clumsy fingers, to put some type of make-up on her eyes, muttering about how she never did this in the lab. Soji was brushing her hair, while Raffi stood at a replicator picking out clothes to wear for the evening.

“Hi, Elnor,” Soji said as he came in. “You going to the party later?”

Elnor nodded, glad to be asked. “I think I will. Everyone’s going to be there, right?”

“Oh, yes. Even Picard said he would stop by a while.” Soji waved her hairbrush at him. “I’m just about done here, may I brush your hair?”

Elnor felt even happier now that she would do this for him, at how close they had become. “Of course you may, but I’ve just come from practice. I will shower first, if that’s alright with you.”

“Sure.” Soji nodded.

“If you want anything replicated – clothes, jewelry, make-up – just tell Auntie Raffi, yeah?” Raffi threw in from across the room. It took Elnor a second to realize she was addressing him.

“I think I’ll just wear this,” he said, gesturing at his blue robe. He hadn’t considered wearing anything different for the evening at all. Was this expected of him?

“That’s perfectly alright,” Soji said. “You’ll still look great.”

Elnor felt himself blush at the compliment.

“True enough, but it doesn’t hurt to get dolled up a bit,” Raffi argued. “Tonight might be _your night_ , kid.”

“My night?” Elnor asked. “What does that mean?”

“Oh, you know. Your night to shoot your shot with your man!” Raffi grinned. “All kinds of things happen at parties – life-altering things, sometimes.”

Seven had thus far been leaning against the wall by the door, not getting in on any of the dress-up. “Oh come on, Raffi, let him do it his way,” she said now.

“His _man?”_ Soji giggled. “Who’s that supposed to be?”

“Oh, you know, JL’s little Borg friend. The tormented one with the great hair. Didn’t you use to work with him on the Artifact?” Raffi asked.

 _“Hugh?”_ Soji burst out into more laughter. “That’s… wow. That’s weird.”

“How so?” Elnor asked. “How… is it weird?” He really hoped it was not too weird in a way that spelled _impossible_. Surely if that were the case, Seven would have warned him, right?

“Oh god, it’s true?” Soji had to lean against the wall now too in order to keep her composure. “No, listen, it’s just strange to me because he used to be my boss… if you’re _into_ him, you do you.”

“You laughing at me fills me with trepidation,” Elnor admitted.

“It wasn’t meant that way,” Soji hastened to reassure him, hurriedly wiping tears of laughter from her eyes. “Look, it’s all good, I’m sure you’re going to knock his socks off tonight.”

Elnor cocked his head. “He will take his socks off?”

Raffi was grinning again. “Maybe his socks, maybe more than that.”

Seven swatted at her playfully. “Gross, that’s my brother.”

“Ugh, I give up.” Dr. Jurati tried to throw the little brush she had been using on her eyelids into the waste disposal unit, and missed by a significant margin. “Anyway, Elnor, I’m sure if you appear confident in yourself… flirt a little… it’ll all turn out.”

Elnor could feel the tips of his ears burning. They had to be positively emerald by now. “F-flirt?”

“Sure. Just make pleasant conversation, be funny, self-assured, um… all things I’m an expert on, obviously…”

“Just because you got with Cris doesn’t mean you know how you did it,” Raffi said.

“But what is… the appropriate type of conversation?” Elnor asked. “How do I be… flirting?”

“Let’s see,” Soji said. “Try showing interest in something he likes, for starters. What does Hugh like? Um, xBs. Paperwork, probably. Raktajino?”

“Guys, we are way overthinking this,” Seven said, crossing her arms. “Hugh is easy. Just say you think that he deserves humanoid rights and bam, he’s putty.”

Elnor gave her a quizzical look. “Putty?”

“Oh yes. Just… really bring across that you think he’s an actual person. He’ll melt into your arms.”

“I don’t understand. He _is_ an actual person.”

“See, you’re already doing great,” Raffi said.

“Oh yeah, and no weird Borg chaser stuff.” Soji sat on the large white leather couch that was this room’s dominant feature. “You would not believe the problems we had with that when I started working at the Artifact.”

“Right,” Seven said. “That’s very much a thing you’ll have to avoid. If you compliment his appearance, pick a squishy bit. Nothing about implants, or he’ll be out of there quicker than you can say _Submatrix collapse_.”

"Oh, and make a _speedy_ move," Raffi took back over from her. "It's looking to me like that Six guy is really getting ready to, you know, stick his tubules in there."

Elnor felt his eyes widen in horror. _Tubules?!_

“I… think I’ll go use the shower now,” Elnor said. “I will keep… all of what you said in mind.”

In truth, Elnor, trying to indeed keep everything he’d been told in mind, was feeling extremely confused. When the time came to head to the little town square for the party, confusion turned to trepidation. It must have shown on his face because Raffi took him aside as they went and whispered to him: “Hey. Listen, don’t get too serious about all that stuff we said earlier about flirting. Just do what your gut tells you feels right.”

* * *

The sun was setting and some of the Synths were lighting lanterns around the square, evoking a nice and cozy atmosphere. The air was filled with the chirping of cicadas, and a balmy breeze carried all kinds of beauteous summer evening scents. There was a table set up with beverages and snacks that had been replicated or made from what grew in the gardens. Captain Rios was donating several bottles of his personal stash of whiskey to the buffet table. On the other side of the square, opposite the snack table, there was some technical equipment that, as Elnor was informed, would later be utilized to play music. Many of the Synths and people from the Artifact, researchers as well as xBs, were already in attendance when Elnor arrived, mingling, talking over their drinks. Elnor made his way to the table that held the drinks, asked for something non-alcoholic and was given yet another fruit juice by the Synth manning the station.

It was getting darker as the sun set, and Elnor remained at first at the fringe of the party, sipping his juice, scanning the crowd, watching everybody talk and enjoy each other’s company.

There was a little bustle now, and a noise as of someone hitting two objects together to get everyone’s attention. Ley and Six had taken up prominently visible spots in front of the music equipment, and a throng of people was quickly forming around them. Elnor too craned his head to see.

“Listen up, everybody!” Ley shouted over the din of conversation. She had a good shouting voice, loud and clear. Next to her, Six was tapping a fork against his glass.

“This night belongs to those of us who should’ve been here with us right now but aren’t,” Ley announced. “We hold this celebration in honor and the loving memory of our people who ought by rights to be here and have a grand old time with all of us right now but couldn’t, because death stepped in and whisked them away from us into whatever the fuck the afterlife for ex-Borg looks like. Their lives, that had only just begun, were cut short, their recoveries left unfinished, their stories left unheard. This night also belongs to the living, who can do nothing now but fight, with all the time and strength that’s given to them, for fewer deaths like those we’re mourning here tonight. So let’s remember our dead, but let’s also remember, right here, right now, that we are alive, which is why I won’t bum out our evening any further. To absent friends!”

She raised her glass. Everyone else who was holding a beverage did the same thing, so Elnor copied them.

“Now, Ley and the Borg Drones are incomplete tonight,” Ley continued. “We didn’t bring our drummer, bassist or synthboarder, it’s me and Six and some playback only, but we’re going to make some music for you anyway, if you want it.”

“Play _Sexy Borg For Your Consumption_!” someone shouted.

“Sorry, hon,” Ley said, grinning, “we have never-Bs here, so let’s maybe not make them uncomfortable.”

Six had unpacked his musical instrument and was now strapping it to his chest. “Oh, we’re not going to be political at the xB memorial concert?”

“You know what, Sixy? You’re right. Screw it.” Ley turned to address the crowd once more. “Fans and friends, this is _Sexy Borg For Your Consumption!”_

The music was like nothing Elnor had heard before. At the convent there had been chants and scripture-songs, tranquil and melodic and flowing. On La Sirena, Captain Rios had shown him some of a kind of Earth music called Blues, and Picard had introduced him to more classical, instrumental Earth tunes. This music, for one, was loud. It seeped from his ears right into his bones without stopping to consult with his brain. It wanted dancing to, although Elnor didn’t know how to dance. Many other partygoers started doing it.

“They’ll be playing their whole _oeuvre_ if no one stops them,” said a voice next to Elnor.

Elnor turned his head and saw an xB, the quiet one in the floating chair. “I find the music very interesting,” Elnor told him, having to raise his voice a bit to be heard over said music.

“It’s a whole different experience for xBs,” the man explained. The others called him… Cal, wasn’t it? “She uses what she’s got left of the Voice of the Collective to sing. You can’t hear it, but it’s there for us to absorb if we want it. Over our mental link.”

“I don’t think I understand,” Elnor said.

“It may not be possible to understand if you haven’t been Borg,” Cal replied. “The idea is, I think, to offer xBs in the audience something extra. The music is meant _for us,_ although anyone can of course enjoy it. But for xBs, there’s a deeper layer there, a performance that is happening in our interlinked minds. The performance is meant to be in itself a community-building event. Or so they explained it to me; I’m not an artist. I practice law.”

Elnor shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “Where I come from, the study of law is often connected to Tal Shiar operations.”

Cal gave him a thin smile. “Of course, no one trusts a lawyer. I went into the practice because it seemed like nothing a Borg drone would ever do. Oh, and to counsel Hugh and the others in case they ever got themselves arrested.”

“That’s interesting to hear,” Elnor said. It was another world from that which he had thus far inhabited, and he was always eager to learn more about Hugh and his friends.

It seemed as though Cal had misinterpreted his statement as a kind of social lie, however, because he said, “Ah well, no use sitting here boring you. I might find Ada and join in on the dancing.”

“How do you dance?” Elnor asked. He caught himself and added, “I’m sorry if the question is offensive to you.”

“My chair allows me quite a wide range of motion,” Cal explained. “And of course I can move my body. It’s only that my legs are missing.”

“I’ve seen xBs with artificial legs,” Elnor said. “Can you not also replace them?”

“Ah, yes. A long story.”

“Does this mean you are uncomfortable with telling it?” Elnor asked. When people said ‘A long story’, he had learned, they were most often looking for a way out of providing the story.

“Not at all,” Cal said. “On Lore’s dump of a planet – I’m sure you’ve heard all about that already…”

Elnor hadn’t, but he couldn’t get a word in edgewise.

“…Well, after Lore had gone, we had nobody to do maintenance and repairs on our implants. With Hugh, I think, it was the left arm that went out first. Poor little thing, he had no way to access his wrist port and almost starved until we could rig something up. With me, it was both the legs. By the time we’d gotten out of there and found a place to help us, something had gone very wrong and the flesh around where the stumps met the prosthetics had almost completely necrotized. They tried to graft new protheses onto me, but there were, oh, complications on complications… and after much pain endured and many false hopes I’d had enough. I wanted no more tinkering on my body. So I chose to have a chair made instead. You see, deassimilation surgeries had rarely ever been performed back then, no one had any idea what they were doing.”

“So you could get a better surgery now?” Elnor asked.

“Perhaps,” Cal said. “But I’m quite happy with the way things are. People always make room for me in crowded places. Incidentally, can I get you anything from the drinks table?”

He came back from the drinks table with the xB named Ellie in tow and three glasses of an almost electric blue liquid.

Ellie handed one of the tumblers of liquid to Elnor. “This came from the Artifact,” she said. “Might just be your deal, buddy.”

Elnor sniffed the liquid and understood what it was. “Ah, well,” he said. “Although I am Romulan, I have never tasted this… ‘Romulan ale’ before. They didn’t have it at the convent.”

“Then it’s a night of firsts for you!” Ellie said. “Come on, bottoms up.”

“You don’t have to,” Cal amended.

“I’ve heard it is quite potent.” Elnor took a cautious sip. He had to cough; it felt like liquid fire down his throat. “Oh! Huh. It’s… bracing.”

Ellie patted him on the back. “Seriously, it’s all in good fun, you don’t need to finish it.”

But somehow, as Elnor continued listening to the music, watching the dancing and trying to convince himself he wasn’t looking for Hugh in the crowd, oh no, not at all, he found himself finishing the drink anyway, gradually in increments. If he took tiny sips only, it didn’t burn as badly in his throat, and the taste was… well, it was fine. It made the tips of his ears feel unusually warm, but it didn’t seem like he'd imagined serious intoxication to be. Maybe he could risk having another.

Ley and Six had by this point stopped playing music and plugged an isolinear rod into one of the devices that did the music-playing for them. They had now joined the dancing or were cajoling other xBs to dance with them. At some point Elnor thought he could glimpse Hugh being dragged into the crowd of dancers by Six’s hand, and steered towards the drinks table more resolutely. He also saw Agnes Jurati trying to persuade Captain Rios to join in, almost bumped into Soji dancing with a Trill woman Elnor didn’t know, and even Seven and Raffi were getting involved. Picard was not taking part in the dancing but he was still here, leaning against the makeshift bar, deep in conversation with a tall man Elnor had never seen before.

“Ah, Elnor,” Picard said when Elnor peeled himself out of the crowd to stand next to him, waiting to be served at the bar. “Are you enjoying yourself?”

“I suppose so,” Elnor said.

Picard turned away from his companion to give Elnor a scrutinizing look. “That’s an uncharacteristically vague kind of statement to be getting from you.”

Elnor shrugged. “The music is nice. It’s good to see everyone having fun. But I feel as though I’ve come here tonight to accomplish something and I have not done so.”

“Well, the night’s still young,” Picard said, patting him on the arm in an almost consoling gesture.

Elnor supposed that was true. The Synth behind the bar handed him another glass of _kali-fal_. He took another, larger sip and asked Picard, “Do you know where Hugh is?”

Picard pointed a finger. “I think I last saw him back there, talking to Geordi.”

“Ah.” Elnor nodded to himself. “I will go find him.”

He emptied his glass all at once and from there on, memories became a little blurry.

He remembered Agnes coming up to him, hectic red spots on her cheeks, waving a tall and almost empty cocktail glass around, shouting over the music, “Cris is being all broody and boring again saying he can’t dance to this music, _someone’s_ got to take me for a spin, come on—”

He remembered whirling on the improvised dancefloor, with Agnes, with others, with multiple people, feeling young and alight and alive—

He remembered running into Hugh, tearing him away from the man named Geordi, blurting out some stupid question, “Does he kiss you well?”

– And Hugh laughing, “Who, Geordi? I would have wanted that once, but no… what's this about kissing?” –

– “Six, then?” –

– “Six? He wishes…” –

– "You don't want to... stick your tubules together?" The words just tumbling out of Elnor's mouth, he knew not what –

– And Hugh grinned like Elnor had never seen him grin before, exposing teeth, and it occurred to him that Hugh wasn’t entirely sober either. Was anyone on this night? Was he? –

– And it hit him, all of a sudden, that he was quite, quite intoxicated himself, and he muttered, “Ah… I shouldn’t have had that _kali-fal_ ” and he wavered, leaning on Hugh’s shoulder a little, oh, a Qalankhai should not act in such a way –

– And Hugh laughed and steadied him, hands curling around his biceps –

– And there was Hugh’s face, turned up looking at him, and he reached out, cupped his cheeks in his hands, cradled his jaw, and there were Hugh’s lips, so soft, they were chapped but so infinitely soft on his –

– Hugh making some noise when they parted, a little moan that told of longing and of sweet fulfillment –

– a searching kind of noise, that said _please, more, I need_ –

– They were walking back towards the cube now, in the darkness, Elnor stumbling, squinting in the night to find his footing on the small, irregular path, and he couldn’t remember when they had agreed on going but it was alright, it was all alright. And Hugh surely, with his artificial eye, could also see in the dark, but he tripped over a tree-root and Elnor caught him, pulled him close to his body, and Hugh wrapped an arm around his waist and it made Elnor giddy with this unforeseen delight –

– And the overhead light went on in Hugh’s quarters and there was more kissing, wrapped around each other like twin vines, but Elnor really, truly shouldn’t have had that ale, because suddenly he felt dizzy, and there were soft, white sheets to be lowered onto, and he sank…

– “Get some rest,” Hugh whispered above him as the ceiling spun, “And I should too.” –

– And normally Elnor got by on way less rest than humans, for example, what with being Romulan, a light meditative trance could sustain him for days, but what he felt now was the sluggish heaviness of true, deep sleep.


	5. At the First Cringe of Morning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I'M BACK!
> 
> Having to split a chapter yet again because it got too long. At first I was like, "I should delete half of this, it's way too long and self-indulgent" but then the actual good and cool part of me said, "Yes, and?"
> 
> Oof, I can't tell my OCs no. So Six gets to level up from one-note joke character and have feelings now. At least I didn't start describing his tattoos or something... I know what they are, and that will be enough :)
> 
> The rating, mmmm, has changed now as you may see. The reason for this is at the very end of the chapter, feel free to skip if you're not into reading about dicks touching (or, in this case, the touching of dicks).

Elnor woke in Hugh’s bed by himself.

It took him a moment to get his bearings. He was covered by a large, worn but soft quilt. His sword-belt, boots and outer robe had been removed by someone – he certainly didn’t remember taking them off himself – but his pants and undershirt remained on. He didn’t know why, but strangely enough he felt a slight pang of… disappointment.

Hugh was nowhere to be seen, but it was without doubt his room – not only did Elnor of course remember coming here with him, there was also a framed holo-image on the nightstand, flickering through a loop of pictures of Hugh with his friends, Hugh with his xBs, Hugh visiting places Elnor had never seen.

But where was he now?

_Maybe he woke up here and he felt so mortified that he ran away,_ Elnor thought. _But no, that makes no sense. This is_ his _bedroom._

_Maybe he felt so mortified he moved to another room. Or left the planet._

But Hugh wouldn’t do that, would he?

Having another look around, Elnor spotted another door, which, if he remembered correctly, led to a small living area. Yes, of course, he had been there with Hugh too last night. “Sorry for the mess,” he’d said, and, “Bit of a bachelor pad, I know,” whatever that meant. Then Hugh had proffered his index and middle finger, pressed together, and asked, with just a hint of a slur in his voice, “Do your people do the… hand-touchy thing?”

“No, that’s Vulcans,” Elnor had said.

“I beg your pardon,” Hugh had replied, looking genuinely contrite over the mix-up. “What do Romulans do?”

“Well, we don’t practice the level of emotional restraint Vulcans do,” Elnor had explained, trying to hold his drifting thoughts together. “Also we almost completely lost the touch-telepathy. So… more contact is permitted.”

Hugh had licked his lips – _oh_ – and said, “Show me,” with a look on his face that Elnor could only describe as… hungry.

Oh no, Hugh had not left the planet.

Ugh, Elnor thought, why did he have to fall asleep? Just when things had been getting interesting.

He also spotted his clothes now, neatly folded on a chair by the door in a way that would have made Zani proud. He put his robe and shoes back on – the thought that Hugh must have folded his clothing, must have handled his sword to put it away so neatly, sent a strange, warm prickle of stars through Elnor’s chest. He heard rustling from the other side of the door, footsteps, then Hugh’s voice, for once unguarded, unobserved.

“Ah – fucking spinal port – come on, _ouch, fuck_ …”

Elnor heard a few mysterious thumps, then a soft clicking sound and Hugh exhaling in relief. “Thank _you_ for not being a _complete_ little shit…”

When he finally found the button next to the doorframe that slid it open, Elnor beheld Hugh in his bedclothes, his hair mussed, caught in whatever he’d been doing to adjust whatever a spinal port was, one hand lifting the hem of his t-shirt, the other arm contorted backwards to do something unknown at the small of his back. When he saw Elnor, he dropped both his arms to his sides.

“Oh. Good morning,” he said.

“Good morning. Can I help you with… that?” Elnor asked.

“It’s fine already. My back didn’t like the couch much, is all.”

Elnor looked at the couch, where another rumpled blanket lay. So Hugh had dropped Elnor into his bed, folded his clothes, and had then gone to sleep on the couch, in his own quarters. Something in Elnor’s chest felt molten and white-hot about that. Oh, Hugh was so… he was just _so_ …

“I need to tell you something,” Elnor said.

“What is it?” Hugh asked.

“I am in love with you.”

Elnor saw some hard-to-pin emotion flicker across Hugh’s face. For a moment, Hugh looked like he didn’t know what to do. Then he said, “I… see why you would think to say that. You feel obligated, don’t you? But it’s fine. We were both less than sober. We only… kissed. You don’t have to do anything more. I won’t feel let down.”

What? Elnor didn’t understand. Was he being dismissed? “You don’t feel the same?” he asked.

“I feel… something.” Hugh ran a hand through his hair, tangling it up even more. He looked frustrated. “But Elnor, it doesn’t have to mean anything. We can move on with our lives and remember last night fondly.”

“I don’t understand.” Elnor felt his eyes sting. No. He would not cry like a child. “You’re here. You’re alive, you want me, I know you do, I love you. But you barely see me, and you evade me whenever possible. What is this? Surely you’re too kind to play games with me. We were going to…” Oh. Right. Elnor recalled what they were going to do, when they’d first met. Take the Artifact away from the Zhat Vash, conquer it for the xBs. They’d failed. “Is it because I failed you?”

Of course, that was it. How could Elnor have forgotten? He had completely pushed it aside in his joy to see Hugh alive again. Of course Hugh wouldn’t want such a failure of a Qalankhai. He’d had his chance to prove himself worthy of Hugh and his cause and he’d botched it.

But Hugh said, “What? Elnor, no, you didn’t… fail me, what does that even mean?”

“I failed to help you retake the cube. I failed to save your people. And when you were hurt, I failed to see that there was still life in you, and I just left you lying there. I was… a bad Qalankhai to you, and I understand if you want to dismiss me.”

“Oh,” Hugh said, his eyes widening, making him look almost startled, “Oh, Elnor, none of that is your fault. I gave _myself_ up for dead in that moment! How was I to know that those nanos would kick back in? How were _you_ to know? And I’m fine now, see?”

“Nanos?” Elnor asked.

“The nanoprobes in my bloodstream. All Borg have them.” Yes, Elnor thought he’d heard Seven mention something like that once. “Now, mine are several decades out of date so I had no idea they could still do something. They didn’t heal me, just gave me a last jolt of strength so I could drag myself to the nearest alcove. I don’t like alcoves, at all, but there’s much a body would rather do than die. It was still touch-and-go for a while, if my alcove had been damaged in the crash, that would’ve been it for me.”

“But it was not… it. You’re here.”

“Yes.” Hugh smiled, a smile meant to soothe, a caregiver’s smile. “I’m here.”

“So then… if you genuinely don’t blame me for my failure…”

“It’s not your failure and I don’t blame you. I meant what I said to you back then. You gave me hope.”

“But then why will you not see me? You just don’t feel the same, is that it?”

Hugh shook his head. There was a pain on his face again, and Elnor wished to make it go. “I feel… much for you. I think I feel the same way you do. But Elnor, what does that mean for us?”

Elnor’s heart was picking up speed. He was feeling so many things at once. The pained way in which Hugh spoke confused him – was love not wonderful? – but there was also hope now, a sudden, blinding joy-hope…

“It means… it means we could be together!” He took a step towards Hugh. “Not just as Qalankhai and charge, but together in all things! Hugh… _E’lev_ …”

Hugh took a step back. His shins bumped into the couch. He didn’t sit down. “I don’t know what that word means.”

“I will show you. Every day.”

“Listen, I… I’d like that.” Hugh ducked his head almost self-consciously, and Elnor observed with fascination the pale pink that dusted his cheeks. “But I… it’s… selfish and I can’t… lay claim to you.”

“I still don’t understand,” Elnor said. “You want me but at the same time you don’t?”

Hugh’s face grew even pinker. “I… want,” he said, something strangling his voice, “But it won’t work.”

Elnor cocked his head in puzzlement. It still didn’t make sense, any of it. Did Hugh know something he didn’t, some reason why they could not be? Was he… pretending? No, Hugh didn’t pretend. Or did he? He had pretended to be dead. He had pretended to not want to see Elnor.

Elnor needed to have clarity.

“Can I say something?” he asked.

Hugh nodded.

“The Qowat Milat don’t expect outsiders to adhere to our teachings,” he began. It was something Zani had taught him when he had been very young. “We do not missionize. People seek out the Way of Absolute Candor or they don’t. But I need your candor right now. Because I thought about you every day, and I missed you every day and I… I did so much thinking and missing and grieving and hurting and this is important to me and I need to know where I stand. I know I have no right to demand your truth from you, but I need it. Just say you want to be with me or say you’re not sure or say no, I never want to see you again, go away Elnor, and I’ll do it… whatever you want… just your truth. No evasions. No pretending. Not even if you think it would make it easier, or make me feel better. Just your truth, and your reasons why, and I’ll go, or stay, whatever you want, and never doubt where I’m at again.”

“Elnor…” When Hugh said his name, it was a quivering, fragile thing. It made Elnor want to hug him. He knew what it was like to be put on the spot and made to dredge a deep-down truth up to the surface, and he hated inflicting this feeling on Hugh, but without the truth, they could not go anywhere. Then Hugh shut his eyes, pinched the bridge of his nose, and took a moment to center himself. Elnor watched him turn inward. Internally he marveled at Hugh’s rigorous self-discipline, working that truth out of himself. Zani would accept him as a pupil with no hesitation if she were there to see. Elnor waited patiently. It took some time to get at those deep-down truths.

“I had no idea that it was that important to you,” Hugh then said. “I… thought about you every day as well. Dreamed about what we might have had. But that was just me being foolish, I thought surely by now you’d have moved on to the next thing. I’m not… there’s nothing here to offer you.”

Elnor shook his head. Moved on to the next thing? “Hugh, I could not sleep without seeing you. Could not meditate for thinking of you. You were with me in every moment, everything I did. I… hurt.”

“I’m sorry,” Hugh said quietly. “I never meant to cause you pain. I thought, with all the wonders of the galaxy out there, you would forget me quickly. It would’ve been better for you that way. I’m not easy to love.”

“You are easy to love,” Elnor told him. Easy as breathing. “You are kind, and noble, and clever and brave and handsome, too. It should be an honor to everyone to be well-regarded by you.”

“I… um, I try,” Hugh said. The compliment seemed to fluster him. “But my work… the xBs are the most important thing to me. I won’t abandon them, not for anything or anybody, not even for you.”

“Of course not,” Elnor said. The thought had never occurred to him. Separate Hugh from his cause? Why? What force in the universe could hope to achieve it? “Why would you abandon them?”

“I know you don’t much care for it… them… us.” Hugh looked conflicted. “And it’s frequently dangerous. You don’t want to be taking up with someone… with a people everyone despises. Your association with me would expose you to scrutiny at best, and constant peril at worst.”

Elnor heard this, and felt… honestly, he felt exasperated. Was Hugh denser than he had thought? Here he was, a warrior trained in the ways of the Qowat Milat, and Hugh, who had even seen him in battle, didn’t want to put him into danger? “I am Qowat Milat,” he said. “I am supposed to have a dangerous life. I have trained to be a warrior since I was a child. I was always going to seek out peril. The Qowat Milat pledge ourselves to lost causes – that is to say, we lend our strength to people who have no one. This – your people, you – this is where I’m supposed to be. Where I want to be. My Mother Superior Zani would call your cause ‘textbook’. And I do care for your people, I care a lot.”

“Then how could you say we’d be better off dead?”

Oh no.

Hugh had heard that.

Elnor wanted to sink into the floor.

“That… was not my truth,” he said. He wanted to look at the floor, sheepish, but he couldn’t. It was important that he look Hugh in the eyes for this. “It was said in a moment of weakness and ignorance and I’m glad that Seven set me right immediately. It makes me ashamed having ever thought that, and now that I know it drove you away from me, it haunts me even more.”

He wanted to… well, what? To kneel at Hugh’s feet and beg for forgiveness? What did a Qalankhai do in such a situation? He wished Zani were here to advise him. On the other hand he was glad that Zani wasn’t here to witness his disgrace.

“I see,” Hugh said. “But it’s not just that, Elnor, it’s more.”

More? Elnor gulped. What else about him didn’t pass muster?

But Hugh said, “Do you remember what the Artifact was like when you first came here? How dreary and dark and hostile it felt? I will probably spend the rest of my life in places like this. And sure, the work with the xBs is rewarding when progress is made, but… it’s also a lot of struggle, and pain, and trauma. There are moments in which it feels Sisyphean.”

“What does that word mean?” Elnor asked.

“It’s… there’s an ancient Earth myth. A man named Sisyphus was punished by the gods to roll a heavy boulder up a steep hill for eternity. Whenever he reached the top of the hill and success seemed within his reach, the rock would roll back down and he had to start over. His name is now synonymous with never-ending drudgery. And that’s what it feels like working the Reclamation Project.”

“But you’ve achieved so much with the people on this cube,” Elnor said.

“The twenty-five survivors, you mean? Well, yes. But there will always be another cube. The Collective spans trillions. And for each step forward we make, some bigot somewhere with the power to tear this project apart throws us two steps back. Reclaiming the xBs is not what gets you down. It’s the hoops upon hoops to jump through, all the factions to kiss up to, all the people to petition in order to be allowed to do the work at all. I have to fight tooth and nail to be able to go to Borg vessels that retraumatize me in order to de-assimilate Borg drones who, upon regaining their personhood, won’t have any rights or liberties. And I chose to live this way, because I can’t not, but Elnor, I can’t condemn you to it. You ought to be on La Sirena having a good time with all your friends. You ought not to follow me down into this depressing, lonely work without reward.”

“It’s not going to be lonely if it’s the two of us doing it,” Elnor said.

Hugh sighed. “Elnor… did you not hear another word I said to you?”

“I did hear all the words you said. You said the work you do is hard, and that I wouldn’t like it.”

“Yes, and… you’d come to resent it, resent me for dragging you into it, you’ll miss the sunlight and your friends and getting to have fun with what you do, and then you’ll leave me.”

Now here was a truth. Hugh’s truth, but it was still… wrong.

“You have already decided this for me?” Elnor asked. “How can you know before you let me try it?”

“I just…” Hugh hung his head. “I just thought that maybe… if I ended this before it even began… before I could get even more emotionally invested, I’d spare myself more grief later on. I see now that it… wasn’t right to make that choice for you.”

Elnor nodded in acknowledgement. “And has it worked? Have you been less grieved? Have you been happy?”

“No,” Hugh admitted, his voice hollow. “I’m sorry it all went the way it did.”

“I accept your apology,” Elnor said softly. “But it can still turn out alright, can it not? We’re both here now. We can make up for lost time.”

“Do you mean…?” Hugh paused, uncertain.

Elnor took a step towards him. This time Hugh stayed where he was. “May I kiss you?” Elnor asked.

Hugh looked up at him, something like wonder in his mismatched eyes. “Yes.”

* * *

Fifteen minutes later saw them sitting on the couch together – now Hugh got why this model of couch was called a loveseat – shy in their approach of each other, but eager to touch, to learn, to know of each other. Their right hands were now enjoined, clasped tightly together, every nuance of the touch exquisite. Hugh hoped Elnor wouldn’t feel how he trembled at the contact. Was touch-starvation a thing in Romulans? Would he have to explain it? But it wasn’t just being touch-starved. It was the fact that it was Elnor holding his hand, that things he had dreamed of but convinced himself he could never have were suddenly happening in waking life.

He reached out his free hand and caressed Elnor’s cheek, his jaw, the lovely line of his mouth, an elegantly slanted eyebrow. Such beautiful, unblemished skin. No implant had ever sat here. Elnor leaned into the touch and hummed appreciatively, his eyes falling shut in bliss. Hugh traced a finger along the curve of one slender, pointed ear and Elnor made a noise that was almost a purr.

It turned out having was a much sweeter thing than wanting.

The air was as honey now in Hugh’s small living room, heavy and golden with blissful joy. Hugh wanted to never feel any other way again, drown in this. How sweet Elnor was! How he permitted, even encouraged these touches, and smiled like this was everything he had been wanting too. Elnor – wanted Hugh. It was scarcely believable. It only slowly settled in.

“You’re so beautiful,” Hugh whispered.

Elnor smiled almost bashfully, and Hugh felt his heart quake. With that smile, and in his eyes such a warm glow, Elnor was truly the most precious creature in the universe.

“You are too,” Elnor replied, in the same low, almost awed tone.

Hugh chuckled under his breath, reflexively doubting the sincerity of the compliment, but then remembering that Elnor never lied. This was… so real, so sincere. He would have to get used to it.

Now Elnor reached out his own hand, mirroring Hugh’s gesture, touching his cheek with something like reverence. Hugh noticed he was erring on the side of caution, touching the natural skin only. It sent a pang of something like faint unease down his chest.

“What?” he asked, playing it off in a joking manner. “Scared of a few bits of metal?”

“No,” Elnor said without the slightest hint of hesitation. “I only thought that… perhaps to touch them would be an intrusion?”

Oh. Well, that was unexpectedly nice. No fear, no disgust, just an attempt to respect his boundaries.

“Just ask me,” Hugh said gently.

“May I touch your implants?”

“Yes.”

Hugh closed his eyes as Elnor traced the implant on his brow. Elnor’s touch was… different from some of the people he’d let touch his implants before. It was so careful, almost feather-light. Hugh experimentally cracked an eye back open to get a glimpse of Elnor’s face and saw nothing on there but innocent curiosity.

_Good_.

Hugh put his hand over Elnor’s and guided his fingers down to the other, smaller implants, then the line of the scar.

“How did you get such a scar?” Elnor asked.

“There was a Borg device there,” Hugh explained. “The removal was… not as gentle as it might have been.”

“I heard that Picard was also Borg at some point. He has no scars.”

“In his case, the implants had only been attached for a short time, and were removed by people who cared for him.”

Something about that explanation made Elnor suck in a breath. His fingertips caressed the scar tissue on Hugh’s cheek. “May I kiss you here?”

“Yes,” Hugh decided.

Elnor also placed a kiss on each of the implants. This too felt different than it had when others had put their mouths there: the difference between putting one’s mouth on something and kissing it. It felt almost… reverent.

“I love you,” Elnor then said in this hushed voice that sent a strange tingle down Hugh’s spine. “I know I said it already, but I… think it bears repeating.”

“It’s alright,” he added, “You don’t have to say it back to me, I just…”

“I love you too,” Hugh said. It felt so new, saying that out loud. He’d said it to his friends and the xBs under his care plenty, through his actions, as a wordless feeling over their mind-link. It felt fitting that Elnor should be the first person he expressed it to in words.

Elnor, in reaction, just scooted closer and put his head on Hugh’s chest. “Oh. Is this your heartbeat?” he asked.

“As good as. The Collective put an artificial one in there. It doesn’t beat so much as tick.”

“It sounds strange,” Elnor said. “But nice.”

_“Nice?”_ Hugh asked. His odd heartbeat was just a fact of life. He hadn’t ever thought to attach a value to it. It would be like calling his kidneys ‘nice’.

“It’s a part of you,” Elnor said as though all that was perfectly obvious. “How can any part of you not be nice?”

Hugh had gotten compliments before, not extremely often, but occasionally. The fact that Elnor was not only totally sincere but also completely guileless in paying them was what left him so very flustered. Elnor didn’t want anything. He said these things because to him they were true.

He didn’t know how long they stayed on the couch like that. At some point Hugh asked if he could touch Elnor’s hair, which Elnor allowed. It felt exactly as smooth and silky as he had dreamed it would.

“Shouldn’t we… go?” said Elnor after a while. “I’m sure you have a lot to do, and people will be wondering where you are.” He didn’t say anything about people wondering where he, Elnor, was, which wasn’t lost on Hugh.

“There’s not anything I need to do right now, actually,” Hugh decided. “Nothing urgent. People will think we’re still sleeping it off. Can we stay like this awhile?”

* * *

As Hugh did eventually make his way down to the mess hall, he became aware of little groups of xBs shooting looks at him and whispering in the corridors. He hoped nothing was wrong. As he ambled into the replimat itself, he spotted all of the Trimatrix 407 group assembled around one of the larger metal tables, whispering animatedly with each other. When they saw him, they all as a group, excluding Cal for obvious reasons, stood up at once. Around them, conversations between researchers and other xBs stilled, meals remaining untouched, as they all tried to get a grasp on the mood of the room.

“What’s going on?” Ley demanded.

“I don’t know,” Hugh told her. “I only just got here. Is something wrong?”

“We’ve been monitoring your side of the mind-link,” Ley said, “waiting and preparing for the big mental breakdown. Instead we get a sudden avalanche of warm fuzzies. What’s going on? Are you on drugs?”

“No,” Hugh said. “It’s…” He laughed quietly. For a blissful minute there, he’d managed to completely forget that his mind was connected to other individuals. So the xBs had all already noticed, huh? First of all of course his old friends.

“What?” Ley snapped.

“It’s actually about Elnor. He and I… talked.”

“You… _talked?”_

“Wait a minute.” Ellie took her sunglasses off. This rarely happened; somehow they made her feel safer. “What’s that thing right there? The one you’re trying and failing to hide under that unfortunate collar?” She all but pounced on Hugh and pulled his collar down.

“That,” she announced, “Is a _hickey_.”

Hugh felt himself blush. “He’s very enthusiastic.”

All hell broke loose.

Six bent his head back and started cackling madly. From his mind, Hugh got a complicated blend of mirth-resignation-happiness-jealousy. Ada and Ley tried to hug him both at once. Instantly, the teasing took up:

“Never thought we’d see the day!”

“That Romulan’s either blind on both eyes or stupid.”

“Are you bribing him?”

“Is he one of those ‘assimilate me, daddy’ types?”

But Hugh didn’t take this to heart for a second. It was just words. Below that, on the mental layer, he felt the deep joy and contentment radiating from his friends. _We’re glad something’s finally going right for you,_ was what they were really saying. _We hope that he will make you happy._

_He already does,_ Hugh thought. _So happy._ Aloud, he said, “Unlike you lot, I’m perfectly capable of getting someone to like me without resorting to bribery. The secret’s _being likeable_ , perhaps you guys should try it.”

The banter would have gone on and on from here, but it stilled suddenly as Hugh felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned and found that Elnor had noiselessly joined them.

“There you are,” he said fondly. Immediately, his heart warmed, just from Elnor’s presence. Amazing.

“Excuse my delay, I had to re-order my hair,” Elnor said. “After all the fussing you did with it.” His smile told Hugh that he didn’t mind in the slightest. He smiled back.

“Sickeningly cute,” Ellie said. She took her seat again; her long, manicured fingers resumed picking apart a bagel. Today she was wearing prosthetics that blended seamlessly with her organic skin, sporting flawless red fingernails that fit her dress.

Elnor’s hand was still on Hugh’s shoulder; Hugh felt how Elnor’s posture changed. For some reason, Elnor’s other hand had reached for his _tan qalanq_ as Elnor surveyed everyone in the room, like he was readying for battle.

“Let it be known to everyone that I have pledged myself to Hugh as Qalankhai,” Elnor announced, his voice clear, drawing eyes from everyone at the surrounding tables. “Anybody who raises their hand against him, or any xBs under his care, will be choosing to die.”

_Ah,_ Hugh realized. _Posturing._

He’d never been on the receiving end of such a declaration. People didn’t usually clamor to take up with him and his. He’d heard that ‘any xBs under his care’ loud and clear. Of course Elnor knew enough about him by now to be well aware that this meant all xBs, everywhere ever. Elnor wasn’t just making a vow to love Hugh. He intended to become a champion for Hugh’s people.

“Hell yeah, dude,” Six said into the silence. “The galaxy trembles.”

* * *

Hugh joined his friends at the table and beckoned Elnor to follow suit. As they had a late breakfast, Elnor was extremely gratified to feel Hugh initiating some PDA, at first just a short squeeze of his hand, an almost shy bump of shoulders, but soon Hugh was comfortably leaning against his side as he talked to his friends like nothing out of the ordinary was happening. Carefully, Elnor tried draping an arm over the backrest of Hugh’s chair and, emboldened when no negative reaction came, wrapped it around Hugh instead. Hugh just sighed happily and scooted even closer, his body exactly as small and solid and warm against Elnor’s side as he imagined it to be, and yet infinitely better. Because it was not his imagination anymore. It was reality, and everything was beautiful.

Quick as in battle, he turned and pecked a light kiss onto Hugh’s cheek.

“Oh!” Hugh said, reddening sweetly. “What was that for?”

Elnor shrugged and smiled at him. “No reason. Just because you’re here.”

Hugh blushed even deeper, resting his head on Elnor’s shoulder for a second as if momentarily overcome. Some of his friends made kissy noises, Hugh rallied and threw a napkin at Six, the conversation continued flowing. Elnor half-listened, his thumb drawing circles on Hugh’s shoulder, as the xBs caught each other up on mutual acquaintances and the state of the world.

“And how is Niamh?”

“They wanted to come along, actually, but there was that civil war on Aivazh III and their house is currently hosting refugees, so they had to pass…”

“And what’s Ozian up to, has anyone been in contact?”

“Last I heard, still working with Starfleet Intelligence… wink, wink.”

“Ah, ‘significant pause, wink wink’ Starfleet Intelligence. That does mean Section 31, then?”

“You know how Oz is. Can’t prove anything.”

“There are stirrings,” Ada said, “of a cube sighting in the Gamma Quadrant.”

“The Gamma Quadrant?” Hugh asked. “That’s very far away…”

“We can go through the Bajoran wormhole.”

“You always wanted to see that wormhole, huh…”

“My contact in Federation HQ says the Dominion will probably have it handled.”

“The Dominion against the Borg? That carries an air of ‘Let’s you and him fight’. What’s the Federation position on it?”

“Officially, well, the Dominion hasn’t reached out for assistance, and the peace treaty with the Federation doesn’t cover military aid and the like. Unofficially, that pretty much translates to… ‘Let’s you and him fight’.”

“So there might not even be a way for us to get at that cube?”

“There’s also a rumor, I don’t know if you heard, of something… way closer to home. Nothing particular yet, though. Might be nice, getting to work closer to Earth. Less secluded.”

“But also in the middle of all the political focus. Easier for Starfleet to interfere.”

“I’ve been thinking – and Six agrees, don’t you, Six? – that it might be time to take the fight back home. I can call up my contact, get some things started. We tried – no offense but – we tried your way.”

“You can’t possibly call this disaster ‘my way’.”

Elnor was walking towards the disposal unit across the room with their dirty dishes when Six caught up to him.

“Listen,” he said. “Let’s talk, a bit away from the others.”

Elnor couldn’t tell if he had hostile intentions. He nodded hesitantly.

“So,” Six said as he helped Elnor load his pile of dishes into the recycler’s entry slot. “Obviously you and Hugh are making a go of it.”

“Do you wish to congratulate me?” Elnor asked.

Six laughed. “You know, I might yet grow to like you, buddy.” He leaned against the wall next to the recycler slot, crossing his arms. “What I wanted to tell you is… be good to him, yeah? He’s been through enough shit and he doesn’t need more of same from you.”

“Are… you implying that I would bring harm to him?” Elnor reached for his sword.

“I’m just giving you a friendly heads-up.” Six straightened his back and came to stand directly in front of Elnor. Elnor was not a short person, but Six was that bit taller than him, built like a reedy, lanky man who did a lot of heavy lifting, probably all his instruments and equipment. “I don’t know if he’s explained to you how we are mentally linked. Suffice it to say, if anything happens to Hugh because of you, I will know the instant it happens. And I may not have a fancy sword, but I can hold my own, and I will not be alone. All xBs in this galaxy will take notice. Do you understand me?”

Elnor gripped the hilt of the _tan qalanq_ tight. “You would insult my integrity as Qalankhai by implying I would harm my charge?”

Six didn’t seem intimidated or deterred in the slightest. “I don’t know what a Qalang-whatever is, but I do know to look out for my friend.” Suddenly, his voice grew quiet and intense as he said, “Look, he seems to trust you, but we don’t know anything about you. We’ve all had our share of disappointments, and we’re worried enough about Hugh as is. Just… don’t fuck up, okay?”

Elnor looked at him carefully, this tall man with the broad shoulders, stubbled chin and impressive biceps, covered in tattoos and Borg implants, with his dark eyes deep and wide as if they were trying to tell him something… and just then, said eyes flitted off past Elnor and back to the table where Hugh was laughing at something Ley had said…

And he remembered Hugh, tipsy and uncommonly frank, but with that edge of humor and fondness, saying “Six? He wishes…”

“If Hugh wants you as well as me, he can have us both,” Elnor said.

At once, Six reeled backwards. “You… gkh?” He made a noise like he’d swallowed his own tongue. Elnor saw with some surprise that he was blushing scarlet.

He shrugged. “Hugh is in charge of himself. I do think he should have as many lovers as he wishes.” Hugh did deserve that and so much more. It was funny, really, that only a short while ago, he had worried over Six as a rival. Now, in victory, with the certainty of Hugh’s regard on his side, he was magnanimous to share.

“Look, this is not a jealousy thing,” Six claimed.

“Are you certain that this is your truth?” Elnor asked, smiling.

“You don’t know…” Six ran a hand through his hair where it wasn’t cropped. “How can I make you see how things were…? Wait, I know, I’ll show you.”

He repositioned himself so that Elnor was in between him and a clear view from the table, the started fiddling with an implant on his wrist. “I had this modified to show… just a moment… here we are.”

Deeply astonished, Elnor watched as a little viewscreen was projected from Six’s wrist into the space between them. It showed a reel of little pictures, going by too rapidly for him to see any details. Then it stilled.

“I keep these on my person because they’re important. Look, here’s us when we first came to Earth.” The picture showed the group of Hugh’s friends that Elnor had already become acquainted with, if much younger. More implants, less hair. Skin and bones and threadbare clothing, and Cal in a wheelchair that looked cobbled together from spare parts, clunkier and harder to handle than the current model. But they were all wearing broad grins, doing silly poses, so evidently glad to be alive and in each other’s company. Hugh – his hair but a hint of dark fluff, his cheeks too hollow – was hanging – literally hanging – off of Six, both arms wrapped around his shoulders, both feet in the air. His smile was so wide it pulled at the much newer, irritated-looking scar.

More pictures like that one followed, with the six of them in various public places together, eating together, playing pool – Elnor had seen it on the holodeck – in a bar together, playing poker, playing pranks on each other, on a beach together, watching a music performance, participating in some sort of political protest together. All these pictures were amusing in nature, with Hugh front and center of the fun, participating animatedly in all of the shenanigans the others were causing. Utilizing his diminutive height to dangle off his taller friends, playing a part in the prank wars, grinning widely into the camera alongside everyone else. Young and – not carefree, never that, but determined to enjoy life’s brighter moments.

“You never knew this like I did,” Six said. “I’m starting to fear you never will.”

Elnor nodded. It was strange to compare Hugh in the pictures with Hugh now, serious, melancholy, distant from his friends even in their midst. It wasn’t just that he’d aged.

“They wore him down here on this cube,” Six said. “And then when that green-blooded bitch—sorry.”

“I take no offense,” Elnor muttered. Yes, he and the agent Narissa were both Romulan, but in any other way as different as day and night, with the feud between Zhat Vash and Qowat Milat as old as day and night, too. She had nothing to do with him.

“It broke Hugh completely, I think, when the people here were killed. We came to this place to set him right, but we can’t. Some part of him is… gone now. Maybe we’re not what he _needs_ to get better. Maybe it’s someone from outside. Maybe it’s you. Just, fuck, I _beg_ you not to make it worse.”

“Some things cannot be fixed at all,” Elnor said. Zani had taught him this _. A Qalankhai is not always just a fighter,_ she had said. _Those with worthy causes will be tired, troubled souls sometimes. It comes with the burden of the hopeless cause they carry. A good Qalankhai stands guard against their demons. Catch them when they falter, Elnor. Uplift them when they stumble. To soothe, to encourage, to listen, will be as important as your prowess with your blade in turning your cause to better fortune. Maybe more so._

_But do not presume you can vanquish all your charge’s demons,_ she had continued _. Nobody can. All you can do is assure that your charge lives to see the burden grow lighter._

“Trust me, I’m aware of that,” Six said, scratching at the implant below his ear, seemingly without noticing he was doing this at all. “Who more aware of that than an xB? Just don’t _fuck_ it up any further, yeah? That’s all I can ask.”

“I will do my best,” Elnor promised.

“One time, must be more than twenty years ago now,” Six said, his voice now almost a whisper, “when he was sad about something, I don’t even remember what… I just sat down with him and told him stupid jokes until he’d smile. And then he took my hand and said, ‘Six, you’re my light’. I never fucking forgot that. Never, I swear. Just… you be that for him now, yeah? You be that to the best of your ability.”

He reached out and gave Elnor’s shoulder a few lightly awkward pats.

“What’s going on here?”

Elnor spun around. Hugh had spontaneously materialized to his left shoulder, the one Six wasn’t patting. Six immediately let go, as if singed.

“You guys have been standing here whispering for a while,” Hugh said. He slanted a meaningful glance up at Six. “Is everything alright? I hope no one was going to start a scene?”

“Of course not,” Six said. His voice was strangely hoarse. “Just… chatting. I have to go tune my guitar now.” He took off with long strides.

“Good, that thing’s not been tuned since that Freecloud concert,” Hugh said at Six’s rapidly retreating back. He sighed and turned back to Elnor. “He wasn’t trying to intimidate you or anything, was he?”

“He did try that,” Elnor said candidly. “But I don’t feel intimidated. I feel sad for him.”

Hugh raised a hand to his temple, eyes falling briefly shut. “I really don’t need this right now.”

“Go after him,” Elnor suggested. “You are his light. He came here to help and now he suffers. That’s not right.”

Hugh looked… confused. Even a bit worried. “What… what do you mean?”

Elnor took his hands. “I love you. We love one another. My certainty in this will never waver. I don’t fully understand what goes on between you and Six, but I would never subtract from the people you’re beloved to, or claim to possess you for myself alone, like you’re some kind of trophy. Speak to him. Have him and me both. You need never be alone. That is… if you want to.”

“I will… talk to him,” Hugh said.

When he had gone off after Six, Elnor stood for a moment and listened inward. Where jealousy had been only days prior, there was nothing but a deep calm.

* * *

News apparently got around fast on the Artifact. Not so long after the conversation with Six, as he was taking a walk outside the cube, Elnor suddenly found himself accosted by the man named Geordi. It surprised him a bit; they hadn’t talked in any length since the journey here.

“Hi,” Geordi said, weaving through the tall, thin, yellowed grass that grew on this stretch of shore, waving at Elnor, signaling to wait up until he could draw level. “Do you have a minute?”

“What can I do for you?” Elnor asked.

“It’s about, well… I heard you and Hugh are a thing now?”

“Oh yes,” Elnor said, a pleasant warmth rising in him at having this new beautiful thing he now had with Hugh acknowledged. “Wait, will this be another ‘shoveled talk’?”

Geordi chuckled. “What, you already had one?”

Elnor nodded. “Six on behalf of the xBs. Also his own.”

“The tall guy with the tattoos?” Geordi smiled, shaking his head fondly. “Go figure. Quite the little heartbreaker, our Hugh.”

“I don’t know if this is a correct assessment,” Elnor said, the most polite way he could come up with in the moment to express his doubt. “I’ve frequently observed you speak of Hugh as if he was your child.”

“Hmm. Guess I am a bit, huh?” Geordi scratched his head. “It’s weird, I’ve not seen him in so long. Maybe a part of me will always think of him as that kid I found.”

There was something here in Geordi’s words. He had found Hugh as a child, and then he had not seen him for many years. It made Elnor think of himself and Picard. He shook his head. Perhaps he was jumping to conclusions, letting his own emotions get the better of him. He had no way of knowing if the situation with Hugh and Geordi was at all comparable.

He remembered that conversation he’d overheard days prior, and Hugh’s words to Geordi then. _I don’t think I was ever a child._

“I suspect,” he hazarded, “Hugh would prefer you think of him as the accomplished adult he is.”

“Huh,” Geordi said. “You’re probably right. Well. Here I am coming up to you to tell you to treat my boy right, and you turn it around and tell me the same. You know what…? I think Hugh might be in good hands with you.”

* * *

That night, Hugh was once again futilely attempting to get to sleep, but it wasn’t like the usual insomnia. It was simply that the day had brought a lot of change, never-seen-before alterations to his life, and he wasn’t sure what would happen from here on out, and the thoughts of it all chased themselves around and around in his head.

The whole thing with Elnor had certainly developed in a way he wouldn’t have dared to foresee. What were they now? They hadn’t put a name to it. Was… boyfriends? Was that appropriate? It sounded a bit like they were both sixteen, but what was there to be done about it? He’d never put a name to his thing with Six, either. They’d both always simply labored in the silent mutual understanding that if either of them ever needed someone to hold at night, emotional support, or a good fuck, the other would be there. That had been before they’d drifted apart, when the six of them had still done everything together, their tiny Collective. They’d had an innate understanding; they’d been in and out of each other’s minds constantly. They hadn’t needed to put a name to their relationship. With Elnor, however, Hugh felt that need.

He wanted to know where they stood. He wanted to know what would happen in the future. During the day it had been easy not to worry about it, to just bask in Elnor’s presence in this new way in which he was permitted to touch and show his feelings. Now that he was alone, there was nothing to do but worry.

A noise from outside the window snapped Hugh out of his thoughts. Something… some _one_ was tapping their fingers gently against the climate control forcefield from outside.

Hugh turned around in bed and, cracking his eyes open just a tiny bit, squinted at the window. Beyond the forcefield that protected the room from the elements, there was a moonlit silhouette perched on the ledge. He recognized it in an instant.

His heart settled. What had he expected, an assassin? Surely not out here…

“Computer, disable forcefield,” he muttered. Immediately, the hum of the forcefield ceased and the scents and sounds of the night – the chirping of cicadas, the rustling of the yellowed grass, the lake lapping against the shore – filtered in. Near-silent, his movements catlike in their agility and grace, Elnor came in with them.

“You really scaled the wall,” Hugh said. It seemed absurdly romantic, meaning romantic in an absurd way, like the sort of thing characters did in a play. It was easy enough to climb down the wall, but up? Having never done it before? At night?

“I couldn’t sleep,” Elnor whispered. “Nor get myself to meditate.”

“Me either,” Hugh said, matching Elnor’s low voice. The lateness of the hour, the silence surrounding them, and their situation seemed to call for whispering. “Did you come all the way here from the station? In the dark?”

“I can see just fine at night,” Elnor said. “I wanted to see you.”

“Well, I’m glad you’re here.”

Elnor came closer, his soft leather boots still not making a sound, rendering the whole scene rather dreamlike. He took off his sword-belt and put it away. “May I sleep here tonight?”

Hugh nodded.

Elnor slipped out of his robe and simply let it fall to the floor where he stood. He removed the ribbon from his hair and put it on the nightstand. Then, at last, he sat on the edge of the bed and took off his boots. Hugh watched this, not quite daring to move. And now suddenly Elnor was under the blanket with him, sighing in comfort as he settled in, as though he did this every day. Slender arms enveloped Hugh in a hug. He leaned into it, resting his head on Elnor’s shoulder, sending a stern and silent warning to his nanites to not divert blood down _there_. It was hardly the time.

Hugh expected it to be even harder to sleep like this, since he so very rarely shared his bed with anyone these days, but miraculously enough, in Elnor’s presence, his thoughts quieted. Elnor provided a focus point. _He’s here; there’s nothing else important now._

Like this, Hugh found himself curling into Elnor’s warmth and nodding off, just like that, without even a thought to any possible nightmares. The last thing he heard, which also simultaneously was the last sensation he felt, was Elnor beginning to emit, in his comfort, a gentle sound from deep within his chest that seemed to vibrate its quiet, persistent way into Hugh’s very bones: if pressed to put a name to it, he would almost call it purring.

* * *

The days that followed were at once work-intensive and felt like a holiday. Hugh felt the xBs looking at him differently when he spoke to them, when he just walked by, as if trying to spot any changes. Of course for them this was only natural. They had been supplanted from enough environments to be wary of the slightest change in the few constants that remained in their lives, and Hugh was such a constant. So he doubled down on spending time with them in all the ways he always had, assisting with reclamations wherever he could. He’d told Elnor that he’d never pay less attention to the xBs for him. Now it turned out he also had to show this to the more skittish xBs.

Yet he found himself with more free time on his hands than he’d had before all the upheaval that had led to the Artifact crashing onto Coppelius. Those researchers and caregivers willing to stay here were working as diligently as ever, and some of the Trimatrix 407 gang were taking to lending them a hand. Beverly came here often, to Hugh’s considerable delight, eager to learn and to assist wherever she could. And the xBs were quite simply making steady progress now. Naáshala had been right. Being able to leave the cube and explore Coppelius for themselves in a safe manner worked wonders to help them along. The sunlight, the nature, the manifold ways to occupy themselves, the choices offered to each of them, the nurturing environment, so different from the Artifact under Romulan control… xBs who had been nearly catatonic before were suddenly progressing in leaps and bounds. Oh yes, it would be good to have this place available as a base for rehabilitation. Perhaps more xBs could be sent here in the future, from all over, to recoup and heal in peace until they were able to decide for themselves what to do next.

This state of affairs meant Hugh had whole evenings to himself now to meet with Elnor, talk with Elnor, take walks hand in hand with Elnor, have dinner with Elnor, curl up on the couch with Elnor. They spent each night together in Hugh’s room now, discovering the many positions in which two bodies could nestle against each other to ensure comfortable sleep. The truth of sharing a bed in this way was prosaic: numb limbs where Elnor lay on top of them, tangled blankets, morning breath and sweat, Elnor’s hair absolutely everywhere, the unforeseen problem of Borg implants poking in tender places, and Hugh hadn’t miraculously stopped having night terrors. Once, he accidentally smacked Elnor in the face during one of them and had to be shaken awake. Once he’d woken up with his wrist implant whirring away trying to extend his long-absent assimilation tubules, a response that made Hugh exasperate of ever being in complete control of his body. Other men only ever had to deal with morning wood. But it was still somehow vastly preferable to sleeping alone, both of them found.

Hugh was learning much about Elnor that he had not known. Sure, he’d known from the beginning that Elnor was kind, compassionate, brave, strong, inquisitive, without bias. Not to mention beautiful. Big things. But the myriad little things that made up Elnor in his day-to-day, those only revealed themselves to Hugh as familiarity grew.

He'd assumed Elnor’s favorite color to be blue, blue as his robe. This turned out to simply be the habit of a Qowat Milat warrior. Elnor’s actual favorite color was green, the fresh green of young plants.

Elnor knew how to bake his own bread, and could talk at length about how to perfect something called a sourdough starter (Hugh had no idea how any food was prepared, he pressed a button on the replicator and didn’t bother any further).

Elnor adored an Earth story by name of _The Three Musketeers_ , and owned an actual paper copy. He lent the book to Hugh with something close to reverence, and Hugh read it carefully, mindful of the yellowed, much-thumbed pages.

Elnor didn’t actually have a universal translator; those had been rare on his homeworld after Federation aid had stopped coming in. He’d simply learned both Rihan and Standard growing up, and was now neatly bilingual.

Elnor had no blood-relations in the universe after the destruction of Romulus. There had not been any time thus far for Hugh to learn Elnor’s entire story, but this time was available to him now. Elnor talked little of his family, of his home before the supernova, but he would talk about Vashti, his account characteristically candid. He spoke of the love of his Many Mothers, the friends he had made among the girls training with him to join the order, the pride he held in the honing of his skills and the observance of the Way of Absolute Candor. He had many an anecdote of pinching fruit from vendors’ stalls, skipping lessons to slack off with the girls in the kitchen gardens, playing pranks on his Mother Superior until she caught him, lifted him up by the ankles, held him upside down and tickled him until he was emerald in the face, until he grew too tall for that. But he also did not hold back regarding the privation, failing harvests, water scarcity, the absence of the Federation relief effort allowing the place to be run down. Mouths to feed and not much to feed them with some years, and Elnor feeling like a burden, like he could never do enough to justify the space he took up. Moreover, being singled out in the town as the ‘sisterboy’, while simultaneously never actually feeling fully at home with the nuns. And, coiling like a snake in his chest as he grew up and the days grew long, the abandonment by Picard.

In short, there was more complexity to Elnor than met the eye at first glance. There was much more to him than a sword, an oath and a pretty face. And so far, Hugh had not seen anything he wasn’t prepared to cherish.

But, as was his way as a natural worrier, he began wondering about the future.

* * *

Days later and Elnor no longer snuck into Hugh’s bedroom like a thief in the night. He usually met Hugh for dinner at the latest anyway, and then they spent the evening together until it was time to retire. They were already, it was turning out, establishing a routine which necessitated Elnor, at some point, cajoling Hugh to turn all the PADDs off and come to bed, “The work is not going anywhere, _E’lev_ , it will still be there tomorrow.”

And then Hugh would mutter that that was exactly the point, but he would attend.

Elnor was learning much about Hugh that had not been known to him. Yes, certainly, the important aspects of Hugh had been apparent since the moment of their first meeting: that Hugh was noble, brave, kind-hearted, gentle, one of the few true altruists Elnor had thus far encountered, conscientious, a true leader. But knowing this and spending every day with Hugh, seeing him in his natural environment, seeing him not desperate, not numb with grief, not lit up with avenging fire, but simply observing as he lived, was an entirely new thing. Perhaps this was just as important as their common cause, the place where the line was drawn between his charge and his _E’lev_. Judging Hugh worthy of his sword only necessitated knowledge of those large facts. Loving him necessitated more.

This was different than the duties of a Qalankhai, it reached much further. When pledging himself to Picard, for example, Elnor had never wondered what the old man’s favorite color was. With Hugh he had assumed it was black, in keeping with the Artifact’s whole color scheme, but it turned out to be yellow, like the sun, like sunflowers. The Borg Collective, Hugh said, knew nothing yellow.

Hugh kept houseplants in his quarters, and he tried, he really did, but he wasn’t a natural at nurturing the little growths. It seemed odd, as he was so freely and naturally caregiving when it came to the xBs, but Hugh insisted it was not the same at all. Elnor, who had often helped in the gardens and fields at the convent, could give him advice here, which filled him with pride.

Hugh thought that Raktajino was the galaxy’s greatest invention, and spoke of it as though it sustained his very force of life.

Hugh had a sweet tooth, which he set to curb with absolute rigor, for the principle of the thing more than any real concern regarding staying in shape. His one discernible weakness seemed to be an Earth dish called tapioca pudding. His one other guilty pleasure was a subspace soap opera titled “The Housewives of Quo’nos”, broadcast on Fridays, 1900 hours. Apart from Elnor, nobody was ever to find this last one out.

Hugh also freely answered any and all questions Elnor had about his life up to this point, including in the Borg. He didn’t seem to find these questions intrusive or insensitive, and “If you want to dedicate yourself to the work here, you should actually understand it” as he said, which made sense. Thus far, Elnor’s knowledge of all things Borg had been a patchwork of facts he could pick up off of Seven and Picard, both inclined to be tongue-tied on the subject. Hugh’s patient, steady explanations now closed any and all gaps in Elnor’s knowledge.

It wasn’t as though he spoke much of his personal experiences as a drone, insofar as ‘personal experiences as a drone’ even existed. He was more inclined to tell stories of his life during and after reclamation, the life of an xB. There were plenty of whimsical anecdotes about his group of friends, the controlled chaos of six people sharing a living space, the places they’d been together, the sights they’d seen and the ways in which they’d been inspired by them. The multitude of joys of finding oneself, developing a personality from scratch, figuring out likes and dislikes, opinions and identity. “This life is infinitely better, infinitely more worthwhile than being Borg,” Hugh would often stress. “I’d never want to go back.” But he was also quite frank about the privation, the discrimination, the struggle of many years it had taken to acquire Federation citizenship. And the years before Federation citizenship, Hugh and his friends on their own against a galaxy that regarded former Borg with utter hostility, having to get by in any way possible… how they’d ripped out and sold off their own implants. Done even more things that Hugh went silent about. How they’d always been a hair’s breadth from starvation before the Federation basic income. And at the center of it, hidden so deep that Hugh could barely divulge it, the gnawing sense of abandonment by those who’d liberated him only to toss him, without guidance, without a sliver of support, into a world that didn’t want him.

Another fact about Hugh: he was sliding into bed behind Elnor now, the work finally abandoned for the day, his evening ablutions complete, fitting his front to Elnor’s back, wrapping an arm around his waist. “Hi,” he murmured into Elnor’s ear, and Elnor turned his head back for some small, soft, lazy kisses. Hugh tasted like the minty toothpaste he used.

The kisses didn’t go anywhere further, and Hugh just snuggled up peacefully, his face buried in Elnor’s hair, chin resting on his shoulder. Still, feeling him so close, absorbing his warmth and his scent, Elnor couldn’t help but feel certain parts of himself taking an interest.

_It's just the proximity,_ he thought, _it’s just because this is all still so new._ Perhaps if he could will himself into perfect stillness, achieve a meditation state, this would go away by itself, and they could both go to sleep. It didn’t occur to him to call attention to it.

Still, Hugh seemed to have other ideas. Elnor felt the hand that had just settled on his waist slide up his chest in a gentle caress, almost exploratory, learning him by feel. The hand now slipped beneath his undershirt, fingertips ghosting across one of his pecs, ever-so-briefly skimming by a nipple. Elnor’s heart throbbed in his side. His cock gave an answering pang, firming up further against his abdomen. Elnor tried to calm his breathing.

He felt a puff of air against his neck as Hugh sighed, followed by a quiet question: “Is this okay?”

“Yes,” he said, not thinking in the slightest. Hugh’s hand now wandered lower, the touch so light it was almost ticklish. _Any moment now he’ll find… he’ll know…_

“Oh _hello_ ,” Hugh whispered. It sounded… appreciative? Elnor felt Hugh’s lips on the rapidly heating skin where his neck met his shoulder. He felt them curl into a smile. He felt his own immense relief.

_He… likes it?_

“Is it alright if I touch you there?” Hugh asked.

“Yes,” Elnor said, too quick, too eager. “Yes, please, if you… want.”

“Hmmm.” Elnor felt a shudder wrack through him as Hugh’s fingertips slid down the length of him, still over the fabric of his underwear. “Oh, it’s so… there’s a lot of it there,” Hugh whispered.

“Is… this a problem?” Elnor asked, his voice already a lot more unsteady than he would have liked. It was so much, being touched like this, and yet, not enough by far. He was so hard now, and he burned.

“No, of course not,” Hugh assured him. “It’s… gorgeous, like the rest of you. I can’t wait to have…” he interrupted himself, laughed quietly. “Well, we’ll see what develops.”

Elnor couldn’t claim experience in these matters. Once, when he had been sixteen, he’d met a boy from out of town. He’d travelled to the convent with his family, because his sister was to take on the vestments of the Qowat Milat. He’d been the only boy Elnor’s age who had ever approached him, who hadn’t known that Elnor was the chosen target for taunting by the village kids. They’d fumbled with each other behind the wall that fenced in the kitchen garden, quick, furtive touches, fearful of discovery. He’d never seen that boy again. It had been nothing like Hugh’s steady, careful hand on him now, but Elnor wasn’t a stranger to crude language. He could guess, at the very least, what Hugh had just left unsaid.

Absolute Candor dictated he finish the thought for both of them. “You would like me to… to f—” His lips trembled. Plenty of people said the word. He’d heard it daily on La Sirena. Why did it seem so inappropriate now?

“Not now. Maybe someday… only if you want to,” Hugh said. “That sort of thing needs preparing.”

He wanted to say he’d think about it. He wanted to say yes, yes, please, and why not right now? He said, “I am surprised.”

“I understand.”

“I mean, I am surprised you people do that?”

The hand withdrew. Hovered. Then very lightly pinched his thigh, as if in reprimand. “You people,” Hugh repeated.

“I… hadn’t thought the Borg had any interest in that sort of thing.”

Hugh laughed that near-silent laugh again. “They don’t. They propagate the species through assimilation only.”

“Ah. But you’re not Borg.” Elnor felt the tips of his ears start to burn. He’d really put his foot in it, hadn’t he?

“No, I am not Borg.” Hugh’s hand stroked Elnor’s thigh. “They do not do anything like this.”

Elnor nodded. “But you do this.”

“I do. Not a lot, but occasionally.”

Elnor’s breath quickened again. “I want you to show me. Show me how, show me… everything.”

Hugh was smiling again. Elnor could feel it. “Maybe in time.”

“Touch me again,” Elnor said, pleaded, really. “I’m sorry for what I said, just please.” 

“Alright,” Hugh said with a lightness to his voice that seemed genuine, and now his hand was back too, slipping beneath Elnor’s underwear. And oh. _Oh_ , Elnor gasped as it closed around him, as Hugh stroked unhurriedly down the length of him, then up again, thumbing the slit where, dew-like, a single drop of moisture had gathered.

“Wait,” Hugh muttered and withdrew again – Elnor hissed at the loss of him – and his hand rose past Elnor’s shoulder back to Hugh’s own face. There was a wet little sound, and when Hugh’s hand returned and grasped him once more, his palm was slicked with his spit. Elnor had certainly done this before during his adolescence, bringing himself off furtively as he lay in his cot, desperate for the nuns not to overhear. He hadn’t expected a gesture this… simple, this crude, almost filthy from Hugh. Somehow, it thrilled him.

Hugh gave him some more strokes, so gentle, so careful. “Harder,” Elnor said, his voice a strangled, tinny thing to his own ears. “Just a bit… please…”

Hugh adjusted his grip, the pressure of his hand increasing in minute increments. “Say when,” he said.

It was so… precise a movement. Suddenly, Elnor remembered something Seven had once said about the bones of her hand. _Tritanium-reinforced_ , Elnor remembered, and _Borg strength_. Did that same strength lie in Hugh’s gentle hands also? This for some reason thrilled him even more, and he twitched and shuddered and had to will himself to stay still and there… yes… now the pressure was perfect, heaven, just so… “When,” he gasped.

Hugh squeezed him at his base, just a tiny bit. It was a shower of sparks. “Like this?”

“Yes.” Elnor nodded fervently. “So good.”

Hugh took up his pace, steady, not fast, like he couldn’t be hurried. They were very _thorough_ strokes. It shouldn’t be much different, Elnor thought, from the feeling of bringing himself off, but it was, Hugh’s hand, Hugh’s warmth at his back, Hugh’s mouth on his skin, still smiling, like this was good for him too, like this was _fun_ for him. Very different indeed. It had Elnor coming apart in no time at all, shivering, bucking his hips upwards in a stuttered canter for more friction, swifter release. In tandem with the need taking over Elnor, Hugh sped up his hand, the other arm snaking around Elnor’s waist and pinning him in place. This was so good… so exquisite… but Elnor needed something more. He tilted his head in Hugh’s direction, hoping he would understand, and—

There it was, the feel of teeth scraping softly at the juncture of his neck and shoulder… yes… now if only…

Hugh’s mouth detached from him and Elnor keened, but then he felt Hugh’s tongue, ever so lightly licking at the point of his ear.

Elnor’s whole body twitched. A noise left his mouth that he couldn’t even name, more animal than Romulan. He thrust up into Hugh’s fist once more… another one… using all his strength for it… teeth nibbling at the tip of his ear now, ever so gently, goddess preserve him… and Hugh’s hand, squeezing him again just on the edge of too tight, now doing something oh so clever and twisty on the next upstroke… and he did it again, and again, and again, until Elnor shouted out and spilled release all over his hand.

Hugh simply wiped his hand off on the bedsheet without ceremony as Elnor caught his breath, again not precisely what Elnor would have expected.

“So good,” he repeated, in gratitude. “Thank you. Love you.”

“And I you,” Hugh said, his mouth no longer on Elnor’s skin. Apparently at some point during proceedings, he had angled his body away. Below Hugh’s chest and Elnor’s back, they were not meeting.

Surreptitiously – he hoped – Elnor inched himself backwards, wanting to see if… ah yes, there it was, Hugh’s undeniable interest poking the small of his back. Elnor turned, bringing them face to face.

“Now you,” he said. “If you want it. I cannot offer much by way of experience, but I will try my best.”

“I… uhm,” Hugh looked up at him with some strange hesitation. “You don’t have to, if you don’t want to… please don’t feel obligated.”

This again? Elnor smiled down at Hugh, attempting to soothe. “I don’t feel obligated. I want to do this for you, to feel you, know you… would you like that?”

“I… please.” Hugh’s eyes flitted off to the side. He was blushing again, Elnor observed. Just minutes prior, pleasuring Elnor, he had been perfectly at ease. It seemed to almost kill him to even consider uttering the words ‘I want’.

Elnor licked his own right hand. “You can say no,” he said. “If anything displeases you, say no right away.”

Hugh nodded. “I can do that.”

Elnor slipped his hand into Hugh’s pants quickly, quietly, keeping his eyes on Hugh’s face, looking out for any signs of discomfort. The light in the bedroom was dim, but Elnor could see just fine. He might have as well looked at what he was doing, but he didn’t want to make Hugh feel exposed. He would go by feel for now, and look his fill another day.

His hand closed around Hugh’s length now. It was a bit shorter and thicker than Elnor’s own, nicely proportioned to the rest of his body. Experimentally, Elnor slid his hand down, then up again. Hugh gasped as he picked up a hesitant pace, his hands already clenching into the bedsheets.

“You don’t do this a lot,” Elnor said. “Not even to yourself?”

“Who’s got the time?” Hugh replied. “Mostly I’m… too tired… mmnng, just like that, just keep that up, you’re doing great.”

Something in Elnor reared its head at the praise. Struck by sudden inspiration, he bent down, sticking his head under Hugh’s t-shirt, his mouth seeking out a nipple – the right one – closing his lips around it, suckling gently. Hugh twitched as if struck by lightning.

Elnor kept this up, and suddenly there it was, at last, a request, no louder than a whisper: “Bite.”

Elnor let his teeth graze lightly over skin, and Hugh arched his back to meet him. “Yes! Just like that. Do it more. Other side.”

_So he does know how to give orders,_ Elnor thought, feeling gleeful. At this angle, his hand was getting cramped, trapped between their bodies, but he persisted. What kind of warrior was he if he let something this irrelevant stop him? Then he felt Hugh’s grip, very light, at the back of his neck. Hugh’s hand cradled the base of his skull, then seemed to nudge him somewhere with intent, and Elnor followed.

He found himself with his lips pressed to the pale curve of Hugh’s neck. A scar was here. Not the one caused by Narissa’s knife: that had healed. This was older, two little dots, like an entry wound caused by something with fangs. Elnor understood immediately that this was what he was being guided towards.

“Bite here,” Hugh gasped.

Elnor sunk his teeth into the skin.

Hugh made a noise, a choked-off little whimper that made Elnor’s heart clench, and his back arched, and he came. Elnor could feel the liquid heat of it over his hand. He stroked Hugh through his climax, his eyes wide and absorbing all Hugh’s beautiful reactions, until Hugh murmured, “Right, that’s enough” and tugged him off.

Elnor withdrew his hand and eyed the mess. Should he also simply wipe it off on the sheets? Would that be rude? They weren’t his sheets.

Suddenly Hugh grasped his hand in both of his, brought it up to his face and licked a stripe of his own release off. Now it was Elnor’s turn to whimper. This, the relaxed set of Hugh’s face as he set to meticulously cleaning Elnor’s hand off in that manner, the pink of his tongue, if Elnor could possibly get hard again so soon, he would. He felt the purr start up from deep within his chest, quite involuntary.

“Next time,” he said as he settled down next to Hugh, “I want to try using my mouth.”

Hugh blinked at him. “You already used your mouth.”

“No, I mean… you know. Down there.”

“Oh,” Hugh said softly. “You would… really want to do that?”

Elnor nodded. “I can’t guarantee I’ll do it well. But I want to try.”

“Thank you,” Hugh said. He looked genuinely moved, and Elnor hadn’t even done anything yet besides offer. “And of course you needn’t worry about… you know, nanites. That’s not actually a thing.”

“Nanites?” Elnor asked. “What have they got to do with it?”

“ _Nothing_ ,” Hugh said. “I’m sorry, I thought surely you must’ve heard.”

Elnor cocked his head. “Heard what?”

“There’s a persistent rumor,” Hugh explained, his lips thinning as he did, “That xBs will sexually transmit nanites. You know, via ejaculate. It’s not true. Six donated a sample to the lab here for them to test, because of course he did. Assimilation via sex is not possible. People just go out of their way to justify their disgust with us. Not enough that some of us, statistically speaking, must have been present at Wolf 359. No, we must also be viscerally unclean.”

“You are not unclean,” Elnor said promptly. “You are a treasure. To have you share my bed is a privilege and joy.”

For a second, Hugh looked like he was going to burst into tears, and Elnor vowed to himself to keep telling Hugh this until he not only believed it, but treated it as the self-evident fact it was.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah I had to say this about nanites... lmao


	6. Electing Strange Perfections

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Howdy
> 
> Everyone: "Director when's the revolution??"  
> Hugh: "There will be no revolution, sluts"  
> Elnor: "I need to protect you."  
> Hugh: "I'm not going anywhere dangerous."  
> Also Hugh: *arms himself on the sly*

Word about their relationship, Elnor found, got around fairly quickly. For some mysterious reason, the xBs were the first to know. Hugh reported that some of his charges had been apprehensive of the change, but everything calmed down very soon. Hugh’s old friends, it appeared, were, like Six, withholding their judgement so far: they were cautiously happy for Hugh, but Elnor got the sense that they were keeping their eyes peeled, not so much because they expected Elnor to mess up in some way, but out of a general sense of mistrust for anyone not part of their little group. Apparently caution served any xB. Seven gave them both a congratulatory nod, which, Elnor presumed, meant they had her blessing.

The La Sirena crew probably heard the news from Seven. They didn’t go out of their way to react to it, but Elnor saw them, sometimes, looking at him curiously, as if asking themselves, _hm, wonder what that’s like._ Soji was the only one to actually voice the question to him, if only because the fact that someone was romantically involved with her former employer offered such a sense of novelty to her.

“What’s he like in private?” she would ask, as they were walking from the station to the cube together. “Does he constantly talk about work? Does he bring his paperwork to bed and stuff?”

“He does do paperwork in bed,” Elnor conceded.

“Oof,” Soji said. “I’d hate for my boyfriend to bring his work home all the time.”

Elnor supposed this had to do with her bad experiences in the matter, but regarding his own situation, he didn’t see a problem. Hugh _was_ his work; this was becoming quickly apparent. Then again, Elnor had known this from the beginning. (Plus, it was very endearing to see Hugh all cozied up in bed with his PADD.) Also, as Hugh’s Qalankhai, Elnor ought perhaps to be just as involved in the work. He was going to find out in time how exactly to best navigate this.

“I admire his commitment,” he said.

“Sure,” Soji replied with an easy smile. “But if you ever get tired of _commitment_ , don’t be afraid to drag him into doing a leisure activity with you. And you’ll have to drag him. Trust me, I worked with him for a while, he just won’t take breaks until someone reminds him.”

“Then reminding him will be among my duties.” Elnor filed this information away for later.

“So you’ll really be going with him… wherever he goes next?” Soji asked. “It’s just… I’ll miss you. And I’m sure the others will too. Seven and Raffi and Picard…”

Elnor realized that he would miss her too, quite fiercely. All of them. “I have not made up my mind yet. Hugh has entreated me multiple times to think this over carefully.”

To his surprise, Soji said, “Yeah, he’s right to.”

Elnor stopped walking. “He simply does not value himself highly enough.”

Soji looked at him out of her pale eyes, and Elnor knew that everything she was saying to him was frank and without duplicity. He liked that in a person. “That’s probably true to some extent,” she said, fiddling absentmindedly with her necklace. “But he’s also right to warn you. The Reclamation Project isn’t for everyone. I remember I had to fill in all kinds of forms and sign all kinds of waivers when I came aboard. Working on a reclaimed Borg vessel, with ex-Borg… it can do things to you. It’s not the xBs’ fault. It’s just… it’s like working in a war zone or doing disaster relief, but instead of the crisis improving, it just goes on and on. Some people can’t take that constant stress.”

“You took it,” Elnor said.

“I’m not sure if I can be your measuring board in this matter.” Soji looked at him, her head tilting ever so slightly to the left. “I am an android. Endurance is what I was built for.”

They had reached the western side of the cube now. Soji, waving goodbye, took off for the front entrance, where she would be meeting with her friend Naáshala. Elnor stood and peered up the tritanium wall until he spotted Hugh, sitting under the parasol within his window, dangling his legs. Elnor realized that he had been waiting for him.

Feeling suddenly quite giddy, he stuck two fingers in his mouth and whistled, high and piercing, announcing his arrival.

Hugh waved at him. “Come on up!”

Elnor had learned to climb at the convent, scaling the training walls at first, which were built for just such exercises. Later, the nuns had taken him and his fellow recruits into the mountains to hone their skill. The hull of the cube was nothing.

When he’d almost reached the window, Hugh grasped his forearm and gave him a hand up. Elnor knew that, as it had been built for the lower gravity of Romulus, his body was denser, heavier than that of a human of his build. Still, Hugh uplifted him without any trouble. Again it occurred to him, _Borg strength._

“Are you sure you don’t want us to get you a ladder?” Hugh asked.

“This is fine.” To himself, Elnor could frankly admit that he scaled the wall so that Hugh would be impressed with his agility and prowess. But perhaps he also did it to be grasped and lifted so.

“Why don’t you just come in through the door?”

Elnor gave Hugh his widest smile. “It is shorter this way.”

Hugh smiled back at him, and seemed to shrug the matter off. “You’re here with Soji?” he asked. “I thought I heard her voice.”

“She is meeting a friend here.”

“It’s good that she can come here,” Hugh said, “that this place doesn’t seem to be bothering her that much. After what she’s been through here, I couldn’t fault her for staying away.”

“I will miss Soji,” Elnor admitted quietly. “And the others.”

He sat down on the window’s ledge, gazing out at the horizon. Hugh joined him, leaning against his side.

“You needn’t miss them at all,” he said. “You can still go with them.”

“But my place is with you,” Elnor argued. “Surely you don’t mean to join the crew of La Sirena?”

Hugh smiled at that. “In another lifetime maybe I would enjoy that. In this one, there is too much else I have to do.”

Elnor sighed. Wouldn’t it be great if things were to work out so neatly? That all he desired could be in one place together? “Then I must stay here, or follow you wherever else you may go.”

“Or you could go with your friends,” Hugh said.

“Have we not had a very long debate on this already?” Elnor asked. “Have I still not convinced you?” Now that he knew Hugh a little better, this topic coming up again did not instill in him the fear of rejection anymore. He knew now that Hugh just… did this sometimes, seeking to please everyone else before thinking to satisfy himself. Hugh wasn’t suggesting this out of a desire to have Elnor go away. It was simply a kind of… reflex in him to see everyone else happy, putting his own bliss second or nowhere at all.

“You… we can still have a relationship, you know, even if you were on La Sirena,” Hugh said. “We could see each other on subspace, just as frequently as we do now. And you can visit me… wherever my next project will be. And you could still have your friends and Picard around, and see the galaxy.”

Picard… yes, Elnor mused, he would miss the old man who had been like a father to him. They had been spending time together recently, but… it didn’t seem enough. After so many years apart, it would take a lot to feel like enough. And there was much he still meant to see. But…

“But go without this?” He touched Hugh’s arm. “Yes, we would talk frequently, but we would still be apart. I would miss this…” He touched Hugh’s hand. “…and this…” He kissed Hugh’s lips. “…terribly. And I’m still your Qalankhai! How would I protect you?”

Hugh was silent for a second, as if ruminating on it. “I don’t expect to go anywhere dangerous anytime soon,” he then said. “And it needn’t be forever. We can… try it out awhile and see how we do. It would… make me feel less guilty about all this. Making you stick around, I mean.”

Elnor hung his head. Of course, the things Hugh worried about would not be wiped away within a single conversation. But if it meant their relationship would be less overshadowed by Hugh’s overwhelming guilt… if it would make it easier for him to get used to it… Elnor had to consider this arrangement at least.

“But what if you _are_ in danger?” He argued. “Unforeseen incidents occur all the time.”

“I’ll get a message to you.”

“But what if we’re far away, and it is urgent?”

“You’ll be with Seven, won’t you? She can transwarp you,” Hugh said, as if this was self-evident. He chuckled a little, almost soundlessly. “I keep forgetting distance is… is such a _thing_ for you never-Bs.”

It wasn’t the first time Elnor had heard him use that term, _never-Bs_. The never-assimilated. The other-than-xBs. He knew that Hugh, peaceable and good-natured, knew nothing of bearing grudges, yet still sometimes, especially after a long bout of correspondence with the Federation board over bureaucratic minutiae pertaining to the Reclamation Project, that term from his mouth sounded a tiny bit like a Romulan might say _Vulcans_ , a Ferengi _hoo-mans_ , or a Cardassian _Federaji_.

Then what was a fully assimilated drone called, Elnor wondered. A current-B?

“You don’t need to make a decision right now,” Hugh said when Elnor remained silent. “Just think about it, will you? Later. Why don’t we take a walk?”

* * *

They walked along the shore of the lake, and soon reached a spot where people rarely went. Hugh had found this on his many roving excursions he took when he needed to be alone, and marked it down on his makeshift map. He felt glad to share it with Elnor now. The sun had recently set, but it was still warm, the air thick with it, and even as Elnor didn’t seem bothered by the heat, Hugh was beginning to be.

“I’m about ready to jump in,” he said, gesturing at the lake. He’d said it in a half-joking manner, but Elnor responded by immediately unfastening his sword belt, nodding with enthusiasm.

“Oh yes, that would be wonderful,” he said. Apparently he actually meant to go into the water.

Hugh watched with some amazement as Elnor promptly stripped. He didn’t do this in a manner meant to titillate him, nor did he display any hint of reluctance to expose himself. He simply tugged all the clothes off himself with joyful exuberance, eager for his dip in the lake.

Hugh found himself following suit, pulling his shirt off over his head. After all, why not? No one would see them here. He unlaced his boots, stepped out of them and put them aside, and now there was nothing for it but to take his pants off. Hugh wasn’t overly given to self-consciousness either, but here in the sunlight, fully frontal, next to Elnor’s golden, lithe, unblemished body…

Still, he kept his posture straight, his head unbowed. This body had survived the Borg, and that had only been the beginning of its long, exciting journey. He flat-out refused to be ashamed of it.

Still…

A part of him despised the apologetic tone of his voice when he said, “I’m not much to look at, I know.”

Elnor looked at him, it seemed, simply committing what he saw to memory. Hugh could spot no revulsion, disgust or even pity on his face. “Why would you say that?” Elnor asked.

“I don’t get much sunlight, for one. And the scars. And the implants.”

“What about them?”

“Well, they’re ugly.”

A part of Hugh felt strangely guilty for saying that about himself. He would never say it about any of his people. He recalled keenly that Ada had written essays on the topic of xBs and beauty standards. Why should only unscarred bodies without any augmentations be considered beautiful? She’d asked. Did this not condemn xBs to either wasting unreasonable amounts of time and money on surgeries to attain the never-B ideal, or consign themselves to being forever ugly? Besides, it was still being debated whether xB implants – not, and this was important, _Borg_ implants – should be considered enhancements or simply accommodations. Yes, there were implants without which xBs could not live, or that were essential for leading ‘normal’ lives. Hugh and his generation of xBs had mostly worked to have any non-vital Borg bits shucked off, to get as close to fully organic as could be possible. But some of the younger xBs had other ideas. They chose to conceive of their integrated tech as a matter of opportunity and pride rather than shame, and were starting to keep some Borg bits around or even trick themselves out with modified implants that gave them a bit of an edge on the average Organic: enhanced strength, reflexes, vision, a dizzying array of black-market weaponized implants and, in one instance Hugh had witnessed, a cup-holder. But still, with the average person, the sight of Borg implants inspired loathing at _best_ , and violent hostility at worst.

“They are… interesting. I have not seen such before,” Elnor said. He shrugged. “But I wouldn’t say ugly. They are simply parts of you. I love you.”

Sometimes, all Hugh could do was grin and shake his head in giddy disbelief that fate had smiled upon him and dealt him Elnor. He was amazing. One day, Hugh would have to find those warrior nuns that had raised Elnor and shake their hands.

“I love you too,” Hugh said, and allowed himself to simply look at Elnor, without making comparisons, to appreciate without diminishing himself. There was no need for it. “And you look amazing, obviously.”

Elnor gave him a smile that was almost shy, as if he were used to throwing out compliments with his usual candor but unsure what to do on receiving them. Instead, he gestured to the lake. “Will you be okay going in?”

“I can swim, if that’s what you mean.”

“No, I only thought… I learned that a lot of technology doesn’t like water,” Elnor explained.

Hugh quirked an eyebrow. “I’ll be alright. If you could disable the Borg by pouring water over them, the galaxy at large would have far fewer problems.”

Elnor nodded, reassured now. He turned towards the shore and started wading into the water. If he felt it cold, that didn’t stop him. Soon he was submerged to the waist.

“Come on, it’s wonderful!” he encouraged, glancing back at Hugh. A tad more hesitantly, Hugh stuck a foot into the water. The lake was sun-warmed but, compared to the surrounding shore, still quite cool.

He took a few steps, but hesitated when it lapped at his knees. Every organic bit of skin on him was breaking out in gooseflesh, and he was probably confusing his nanites. Maybe he would stay right here.

A this point in history, Elnor splashed him.

Hugh gasped, momentarily startled as the cold water hit his torso and arms. “You—!”

Elnor, now fully submerged and treading water, grinned at him. “You ought to get it over with quickly. That way you get used to it.”

Well, he was right about that, but… “Oh, just you wait. You’re getting dunked so hard for that.”

Elnor stuck his tongue out and removed deeper into the lake, but Hugh pursued now. Once he was up to his neck in the water, he didn’t mind the cold anymore. He hadn’t gone swimming in many years and frankly he was surprised he still remembered how, but apparently this was one of those skills that, once learned, stuck with a body. He dove under the surface, pulled up to Elnor and managed to grab him by the waist and pull him under.

Elnor, recovering his bearings within seconds of being dunked, squirmed in Hugh’s grip and bobbed back up. They play-fought, ineffectual splashing and kicking of limbs and laughter. At some point, as Elnor, still grinning widely, his hair plastered to his skin, tried to twist away and splash him again at the same time, it occurred to Hugh that they were grappling with each other fully in the nude, and the playful fight turned into something else. Now they were chest to chest, and now they were kissing, still treading water, and Elnor tried to entwine their legs, get a thigh up against Hugh’s crotch. Despite the cool water, Hugh felt himself growing hard, growing hot, a slow fire kindling low in his stomach, tingling in his limbs.

“Are you… too?”

“Yes,” Elnor gasped.

“This won’t work, we’ll sink.”

“Back towards the shore, then,” Elnor suggested.

They made their way back to where Elnor, at least, could comfortably stand. Hugh meant to nudge him into going further, he hadn’t been gifted with Elnor’s height and his feet didn’t touch the ground yet even if he tiptoed, but before he could request this, Elnor wrapped both arms around his waist and pulled him close, their bodies now flush against each other.

“It’s alright,” Elnor murmured against his lips before bringing them together for a long, deep kiss. “I’ve got you. I won’t let you down.”

Something about his words, about his strong arms around Hugh’s waist holding him up, fanned the flame within him and he tried to get even closer, molding himself to Elnor’s body, feeling Elnor’s hard cock against his abdomen. He cupped Elnor’s jaw in his hands and kissed him back, sliding his tongue past Elnor’s beautiful open lips. His legs were still treading water but he stopped now, focused fully on kissing Elnor, being otherwise still and… held.

They broke the kiss and Elnor closed his mouth, tipping his chin up, indicating where he wanted Hugh’s mouth next. He pecked one last smaller kiss onto Elnor’s lips, then started peppering them across his cheeks, down his jaw, into the hollow of his throat. He inhaled Elnor’s scent here, sun-warmed and mixing with that of the lake. So gorgeous, so immaculate. His skin… most people Hugh knew had their assimilation entry point here; not Elnor. Hugh’s left hand twitched, a phantom ache… he buried it in Elnor’s hair, wet strands of moon-silk. Elnor sighed in bliss, tipping his head back further.

“So good,” he was moaning, under his breath but not so quiet that Hugh couldn’t hear. “You feel… so nice. So good against me. And I… hold you up like this, you’re light, hold you forever, never let you fall.”

This, Elnor rambling in this soft voice, half to himself, this was somehow better than any dirty talk. Hugh tried to press himself even closer, his kisses growing fevered and bity, blunt nails digging into Elnor’s back. His hips were twitching quite without his conscious input, trying to rut against Elnor’s thigh, and the friction, the drag of his cock against Elnor’s skin, made him groan, made him hazy with want, his mind insensate to anything but this moment.

His legs wrapped around the small of Elnor’s back now, heels digging into the softness of him, his arms tightening their loop around Elnor’s neck. He breathed a ragged breath. “Aren’t your arms getting tired, darling?”

“No, not yet.” Elnor planted his feet, one of his thighs bending to support Hugh’s weight, one arm remaining around his waist, the other adjusting, slipping lower, grasping his rear, cupping it so nicely… Hugh whimpered, nuzzled at Elnor’s throat more urgently. With the slight shift in position, his cock rubbed against Elnor’s – they both sucked in a breath.

“Oh,” Elnor gasped, his eyes wide and round.

“Please,” Hugh whined, “please.”

He let his hips tilt forward, again, again, brushing against Elnor, greedy for the friction. Every slide of their cocks against each other sent a jolt through him, his skin so sensitive, the sensation so exquisite… if only he could get one of his hands down there, or better yet, his mouth around Elnor’s cock, lick up that pre-cum, take him as deep as he would go… but for that he’d have to break from Elnor’s hold on him, which would be terrible, no, he had to stay like this, secured in Elnor’s arms.

If anything, Elnor was even more affected by this than he. Hugh heard how he mewled now with every shallow thrust of his hips, the sounds coming out of him quite without his volition, saw his eyes squeezed shut in pleasure, his lips parted with it, felt the tremors run through him. He was close, almost there, Hugh could tell.

“Put me down,” he whispered.

Elnor opened his eyes. “Wait. Wait… just… so close…”

“Yes, I know. Put me down so I can help you.”

Elnor nodded, but then reinforced his grip, hoisting Hugh a little higher. Hugh wondered if he had understood him correctly. But then they were almost at the shore, and Elnor slowly, carefully, got down on one knee, and lowered Hugh into the wet sand as though he was something infinitely precious.

The shallow water still lapped around his body, and the sand felt smooth and cool on his heated skin. Past Elnor’s head, up in the sky, the light had almost completely fled now, the two red waxing moons rising. Across the lake, on the other side, the lights were coming on in the Artifact, dappling the water’s surface with bright yellow flecks. Hugh was aware that he’d be digging sand out of his crack, not to mention his implants, for the next business week, but right now he’d never experienced something this romantic.

Elnor was on his hands and knees above him, eyes drinking in the sight of him; Hugh could feel his rapid hot breaths on his skin. He reached out with both hands and tugged Elnor down into a kiss, close to him, flush against his body, he got a hand down between them and ran his palm down Elnor’s cock. It was true what they said about Romulan men. What a specimen, at least by human standards, so long, so thick, and all for Hugh to play with. A part of him, the part that had seen his share of action, wished Elnor would spread him open and go to town. But no, not tonight, this would do, this was perfect already.

Elnor let out all kinds of noises, little moans and whines and breathy whimpers, as he frotted against Hugh with increasing desperation. Hugh’s own hips were stuttering up to meet him, their pace growing erratic, and Hugh forced his eyes to remain open, to absorb the expression on Elnor’s face, his eyes squeezed shut in near-rapture, biting his lower lip, wet strands of hair slipping past his shoulders, as he crested, as he climaxed.

Hugh felt Elnor release in one hot spurt, felt it streak across his thighs and onto his stomach. _One day,_ he thought dizzily, _one day he’ll come inside me._

Elnor rallied fast, but in increments. “That was… that was… woah.”

Hugh grinned. “Yeah.”

But Elnor was now frowning at him. “You haven’t yet.”

That was true, but Hugh could take care of himself. He had already been gifted so much tonight. “I… think I’ll just be a minute.”

“No, wait.” Suddenly, Elnor’s fingers gripped him at his base. Hugh squirmed a little, testing this out, not exactly resisting. Elnor had him tight, not painful, but secure.

“I promised I would use my mouth,” Elnor said.

“You needn’t.”

“I… want.” Again, Hugh felt Elnor’s eyes on him, raking over him, taking him in wholly. “I want.”

Hugh nodded.

Elnor kissed him, thoroughly and at length, his tongue slipping in and twining around Hugh’s. He kissed down his neck, then Hugh felt his mouth on his shoulder, on his collarbone, on his chest, going lower. Now it slid down his abdomen, along the trail of tiny, downy hairs there. Hugh’s breath was already coming in little gasps. Elnor’s mouth on him… so hot… he willed himself not to squirm in his need for more, hands clenching into the wet sand.

Then Elnor kissed the tip of his cock, a closed-mouth kiss. He looked up, his lips already smeared with precum.

“Tell me if I’m doing it wrong,” he said, and took Hugh in his mouth.

Hugh felt him determinedly bob his head down, adjusting, finding his footing, exploring the sensation. He trembled as he was enveloped, by fractions of inches, in the wet heat of Elnor’s mouth, it felt so good and yet so torturously slow, but Elnor needed to take that time. Hugh reached out and put a hand on top of his head, stroking his hair with the last shred of coordination he had left in him.

“Slowly,” he murmured, “It’s not a race.”

Elnor made a noise down in his throat, some hum of acknowledgement, and Hugh felt it vibrate all throughout him, and he trembled. “Ah- ah… that felt… so good…”

Elnor moved off slightly, almost all the way, then took him in deeply, more than halfway, now he was almost down to the base of him… he hollowed out his cheeks and sucked, and Hugh’s tip hit the back of his throat, and Hugh was sprawled helpless on the sand, lost to the sensation of it, and the fire coursing through him and the tightness of his skin and something coiling deep down in the very core of him…

All he could do was moan senselessly as Elnor found his rhythm, as his tongue lapped at the underside of him…

And Elnor was making that purring sound again, and it went straight to Hugh’s cock and he thought he must surely explode, it was so much, no one could hold this much pleasure inside and not die…

And somewhere deep within him, it was as though a spring was being wound tighter, and it had to release, at some point, almost…

“I’m going to… I’m going to…”

Elnor acknowledged again, another hum, but he didn’t withdraw his mouth, he was still right there and Hugh couldn’t…

He came, flooding Elnor’s mouth with it, drawing a little choked noise out of him, and now Elnor moved back, the last streaks of cum dribbling onto his closed lips. He caught most of it on his tongue, swallowing it down like a man dying of thirst.

“I hope I did well,” he said, when he could speak.

“You did… it was… amazing.” Hugh exhaled a shaky sigh. “I’ve… rarely ever had this done to me.”

Elnor wiped his mouth, in a gesture that somehow made Hugh suck in a breath and twitch again, already. “That changes now,” Elnor said. “Never again will you have people take from you without giving in turn. Not as long as I live.”

Again, Hugh thought, _He is so sincere._

* * *

“I’m getting back on the wagon for real this time,” Raffi said, her arms full of glass… objects. “I don’t need this stuff anymore. It’ll be easier to quit the snakeleaf if I literally have nothing to smoke it out of.”

Elnor was watching this from a distance. He’d been taking a stroll through Coppelius station, wondering if he should pick a bouquet of flowers to put up in Hugh’s quarters, when Raffi had come striding off the transporter pad with all this paraphernalia. Evidently, she’d gotten it from her room on La Sirena.

“So what are you going to do with it?” Seven asked.

“Ask around if anyone wants it,” Raffi replied with a shrug. “If not, I’m throwing the whole mess into the lake.”

“Well, that would be a waste.” Doctor Soong had come out of his lab at the commotion and now joined the conversation. He picked up a thin pen-like glass object that Elnor had occasionally, during Raffi’s bad spells, seen her use. “May I relieve you of this?”

Uninterested, Elnor lost sight of Raffi’s little giveaway (as a Qalankhai with a cause, he had no use for intoxicants, or anything that would make him lose his edge. How could he defend his charge if he was not alert?). But as the day turned to evening, it appeared that at least one of the devices had found its way to the Artifact.

All the xBs from Hugh’s original friend group were parked out front of the cube on one of the many large rock formations hereabouts. Cal had lifted himself off his floating chair to join the others on the ground, the chair now stood a small distance away from their circle. They’d brought the large quilt from Hugh’s room with them and spread it on the ground like a sort of picnic blanket. One of Raffi’s larger glass objects, faintly resembling a hookah, was positioned at the center of the circle comprised of their bodies. They were passing the mouthpiece back and forth. A plume of scent emitted from the object, heavy like incense. Elnor crinkled his nose.

He spotted Hugh sitting on a rock slightly elevated above the group on the blanket, dangling his legs, on his face a look of fond amusement. When he spotted Elnor, he visibly perked up – Elnor’s heart warmed at this display of delight by his very presence – and waved him closer. Elnor braved the cloud of scent and joined him. Immediately, as he sat down, Hugh leaned against his side in a manner that was beginning to become commonplace between them.

“Hi,” he said.

“Hello,” Elnor replied, turning his head to kiss Hugh’s cheek. “I see Raffi has visited here today.”

“Yeah, she had a gift for Ley and Six,” Hugh said with a grin. “They were delighted. Waste not, want not.”

“So it seems.” Elnor briefly scrutinized Hugh. He seemed perfectly in control of his faculties, his movements sure, his eyes and speech clear. “You have not partaken of the snakeleaf?”

“No, I wanted to—”

“Hugh never goes in for that kind of thing,” Ley said from where she was sprawled on the quilt. “Never ever. He’s always been the responsible sober friend who got us all home, he’d never—”

“Oh, nonsense,” Hugh said, sliding off his perch to join the others. “Give me that.”

All the other xBs exchanged wide-eyed looks of surprise. Hugh took the mouthpiece off of Ellie, inhaled deeply, defiantly, and promptly started coughing. Ada handed him a thermos from a quilted bag by her side.

He sat down between her and Six, cross-legged. The mouthpiece went around the circle. Elnor was offered it too, but declined. The fumes emanating from Raffi’s glass contraption were making him dizzy enough as it was, so he simply settled down next to Hugh, resting his head on Hugh’s thigh. Almost immediately, Hugh’s hand found its way into his hair, petting it in gentle, pleasant motions. Elnor looked up at the starry sky and let his thoughts drift, listening in now and again as the xBs around him talked in soft voices about politics.

Gradually, as everyone became lulled by the snakeleaf, conversation drifted off. Elnor observed how the xBs huddled closer to each other now, Ley curling up against Six, Ellie with her head in Ada’s lap, Ada resting her ankles on Cal’s leg-stumps. Suddenly there was a noise, emitting from one of them, Elnor couldn’t tell who: a soft, rhythmic, chirping trill, a bit reminiscent of a cicada. Soon more voices joined in, several of them making the sound now.

“What is this?” Elnor asked, gazing up at Hugh.

Hugh was yawning, rubbing at his eyes, his whole form tilting slightly forward. “It’s just this sound xBs sometimes make,” he said vaguely.

“I never heard you do this.”

“It’s… I wasn’t going to freak you out. It’s a Borg thing, you know. It means a drone has interfaced with its alcove and is entering regeneration. In an xB it’s basically… a sound to signal that they’re safe and comfortable and ready to enter a resting state.”

“That sounds very nice, actually,” Elnor said. “It’s quite a lovely sound.”

Hugh blinked lazily at him. “You’re not… unsettled by it?”

“Not at all,” Elnor insisted. “The only thing unsettling here is the thought that you would suppress your natural behaviors around me on the assumption that it would disquiet me.”

“Oh,” Hugh said.

Someone in the pile the other xBs were rapidly becoming wolf-whistled.

“Definite keeper,” came Six’s sleepy voice.

“Yeah, hold on to that one,” Ley agreed.

Elnor observed that their chirping was synching up, and that they were all linking hands as it did. “Are they… communing in some way?” he asked Hugh in a whisper.

“Mm-hm.” Hugh nodded. “Again, it’s an xB thing.” Elnor didn’t need telepathy to discern how Hugh was longing to take part in this xB thing.

“You should join your friends,” he suggested.

“But I… I was going to spend the evening with you,” Hugh said, adorably uncertain.

“I will still be here tomorrow,” Elnor assuaged him. “I don’t begrudge you one night with your friends. Go on, I can tell this is important to you.”

Hugh bit his lower lip. “But it might get… intimate.”

Elnor smiled. “I do not begrudge you this either.” He watched as Hugh got up onto unsteady feet, and made his way over to the group, curling into Six’s side. Six put an arm around him like he’d done this many times, which was likely to be true.

“But I cannot get you all back to the Artifact and into your beds,” Elnor cautioned, still smiling.

* * *

The morning after that night, when they’d all sufficiently recovered, Ada showed Hugh a message she had gotten from her contact in Starfleet Headquarters. He sat in his office for most of the afternoon, spinning idly in his swivel chair, pondering it.

The holiday in the sun was coming to a close. It had been beautiful, wondrous, like a slice of someone else’s life. A someone else who could rest, relax, put down roots. Who went for swims in the lake and walks in the garden, who lived with all his friends in shouting distance, who sat down in the tall grass sometimes and just soaked up the sun’s rays, with nowhere better to go and nothing urgent to do.

Who turned away from the suffering of his people and pushed it out of his mind in favor of personal domestic bliss. Who was physically able to walk away from it all, to lead a life without a cause, who could live without having done his utmost to alleviate pain, to help the vulnerable, to educate the ignorant, to fight like hell for a better tomorrow. To speak for the many that had not found their voices yet.

Hugh had never put down roots of any kind, anywhere. Home was not a place to him. It was a people.

Perhaps, time permitting, he would return here someday, and rest again. He would see the Artifact thrive into a place where xBs could heal and learn and find their footing as people in peace, without the struggle that Hugh and his cubemates had had to endure all on their own. It was a nice spot to retire. But not yet. For now, he had his work to do.

But there was one more thing left for Hugh to do here.

He ventured deep into the bowels of the Artifact, above the water level but only just barely, and here he came to a vast, cavernous room, where the gigantic, hulking transwarp engines slept now, left to gently rot or, perhaps at some point, be cracked open for parts or poked at by the curious scientists who would no doubt come here as soon as Coppelius was cleared for general space travel. To be studied or disassembled: the fate of anything ex-Borg, in the passive voice. Gazing at the carcasses of the engines, Hugh felt a moment of kinship with them.

Engineers worked and slept here now, in their makeshift workshops. The engineering crew aboard the Artifact were a mixed bunch: some of them were, well, normal folks. They worked their shift and then ascended to the habitat levels for drinks with friends, sunbathing, a dip in the lake, a visit to Synthville or any number of recreational activities. But others, xBs and researchers alike, got a bit weird down here. But they kept the Artifact habitable for everybody else, and assisted with the more mechanical parts of reclamation, and they knew the secrets of the Borg tech, so a lot of harmless weirdness could be tolerated.

In the gloom illuminated by warm, golden safety beacons, the myriad sounds of engineering tools at work were never silent. The workshops grew constantly, every engineer tinkering with and adding to their little lean-tos. Reactivated nanites swarmed here; Hugh couldn’t see them, but he could certainly feel their presence.

The largest workshop here belonged to Scotty (the xB had given himself this name to honor his personal idol). Scotty had been a maintenance drone in the Collective, and he didn’t see a reason to let that skill go to waste. Unlike many xBs, he had wanted, from the start, to hang on to some of his implants and exoplating. He’d kept the breastplate (it protected him from explosive engineering mishaps, as he said) the eyepiece (for viewing the fiddly little details of his work, increasing his precision) and most of one Borg-manufactured arm (for interfacing with the technology – in a safe way, of course). With his bald head, and his brown skin still looking a tad ashen from spending the majority of his time holed up in engineering, Scotty looked a tiny bit closer to the Collective than most xBs Hugh knew. Needless to say, he was also the unrivaled expert on Borg cube – and drone – mechanics.

Right now, Scotty was up to his elbow in a piece of warp plasma conduit, his arm plugged in at three different spots, the diodes connecting him to his project glowing merrily green and red and white. His eye-piece whirred away as he held a flux-stabilizer to each connection with his flesh hand. Hugh hoped he wasn’t interrupting something sensitive.

“Scotty?” he said.

Scotty looked up from his work and gave him a grin, seemingly not minding being disturbed. “Liberator!” he said in greeting, thumping his flesh fist upon his breastplate in a way – Hugh vaguely remembered, it had been so long – drones were programmed to genuflect to the Queen. “What brings you down here?”

Hugh frowned. “Liberator? Really? Has Six been spreading this around?”

(But it was different here, now. When Six called him that, it was teasing, a nickname, an over-exaggeration. _Grand Liberator._ Six had nicknames – pet names, really, with a pinch of irony – for all of the Trimatrix 407 crew.)

(It was a joke among old friends. Nothing more than that. If it were genuinely how Six saw him, actual reverence hidden under a protective layer of sarcasm, Hugh wasn’t sure he could bear that.)

Scotty gave him an amiable shrug. “From what I hear of the crew, it’s starting to stick.”

Hugh sighed. “It’s just ostentatious. _Director_ will do. Although I really prefer Hugh.”

“Sure… director. But, again, what can I do for you?” Scotty asked.

“There’s… I’m heading out again soon.”

“You’re leaving the Artifact?”

Hugh nodded. Admitting it was happening meant accepting that it was. It was not an easy step to take. “Not immediately, but probably soon. La Sirena can’t stay here forever, I intend to hitch a ride with them. But before that, there’s… something I need you to do.” He took a deep breath. “A while ago, something was… taken from me. It happened out of necessity, and I didn’t see a reason to object at the time. But now I want it back.”

“Hmm. I see.” Scotty pulled a PADD out of a haphazard stack of them to one side of his workbench. He nimbly disconnected his Borg arm from the conduit in order to give Hugh his full attention. “I must say I didn’t expect you of all people asking me for an enhancement. And this is to be… tactical in nature? What, if I may inquire, do you expect to find once you get out there?”

“I don’t know,” Hugh said. “I hope I’ll never have to use your… enhancement. I’ll just… I recognize that this galaxy is a dangerous place for an xB. I stood by empty-handed and watched my people get killed. I don’t ever want to feel this helpless again.”

“Hmm,” Scotty said again. “I’ll see what I can do with the materials available to me.” He took a tricorder and ran it over Hugh’s wrist. “You were a scout, weren’t you?”

Hugh felt his lips thin. “It shouldn’t matter now, but yes.”

“Yes, I could just tell. They usually made the scouts short and solid. Maturation chamber kid, weren’t you? The make of the nanites suggests Delta Quadrant origin. The good old Unicomplex.” Putting the tricorder aside, Scotty began opening drawers below his workbench, rummaging in the gloomy depths. “You say it shouldn’t matter, sir, but that’s politics. Down here, we speak engineering.”

“Granted,” Hugh admitted.

“I will have to nip up to medical and call in a few favors. You’ll be wanting a local anesthetic at the very least. We attempt to take better care than Mother Collective did – we may be in the master’s house, but not using the master’s tools. What exactly would you like replaced?”

Hugh told him.

As he had expected, Scotty barely even looked surprised. The engineer lived for his work, and was able to take most everything in stride. Hugh’s concerns didn’t affect him. He saw this solely as a job.

“Well, I’ll be happy to help my liberator,” he said, not caring that Hugh scowled at this. “But, I have to ask. Is it getting serious, then?”

“Is what getting serious?” Hugh asked.

“There’s been whispers among the xBs here. They say that maybe it’s time to take action.”

Hugh raised an eyebrow – the one he had. “What kind of action might that be?”

“It worked for the Synths.” Scotty sounded almost defiant.

“What worked for the Synths?”

“Taking what they needed at the point of a weapon.”

Hugh clicked his tongue. “So that’s the kind of thought that’s spreading among the xBs.” He sighed. “Listen, nothing ‘worked for the Synths’. The recent events won them the right to exist, barely. Now they’re starting at zero – just like us. I’m not going to incite some kind of violent revolution. It’s not how I want things to be done.”

“You almost did, back when we had those Zhat Vash here.”

“I wasn’t thinking clearly.” Hugh shook his head. “Look, even if I thought we could gain anything lasting by means of violence… it’s not feasible right now. What do you want us to do, storm Federation Headquarters? There are too few of us, we are too scattered, too vulnerable. There can be no show of strength where no strength exists. To rebel, you need a movement.”

“Then ally with the Synths.”

“What, all twenty of them?” Hugh shook his head. “All I want to do is give xBs a space to heal. I’m not some sort of revolutionary.”

Scotty gave an ambivalent shrug. “You’re the liberator.”

He didn’t pursue the conversation any further. Instead he contacted one of the xBs in the Artifact’s medbay, and gathered up component parts until she arrived, carrying a medkit filled with surgical tools and a hypospray of the promised anesthetic. They briefly conferred over the task to be done, then Scotty pulled a large, dusty bottle out from underneath his workbench and poured a shot, which he passed on to Hugh.

“For the pain,” he said. “In case that hypo doesn't do the trick. Sláinte!”

What they were pulling off now was, strictly speaking, not completely legal in the Federation. It was a reverse-deassimilation procedure of some kind (yes there was a word for that, but Hugh didn’t think it applied), a combined effort of mechanics and medical science not to take something off but to put something back.

It really barely hurt.

Once it was finished, and he started to regain feeling in his left arm, Hugh couldn’t help but keep flexing his fingers, rotating his wrist. Nothing felt different, which was a lot stranger than if it did. Roused from their thirty-year slumber, the nanites would knit the skin back together within no time. Nobody would be able to tell that anything had changed.

* * *

“I’m not going back to Earth for the time being,” Ada said. “I’m staying here.”

“Here?” Hugh asked her. “How come?”

She’d come up to him in the mess hall as he was having his lunch. It was the day after he’d had the change made down in engineering, and already his hand looked perfectly healthy again, like nothing had ever happened here. His mind was already beginning to file it away, focusing instead on the upcoming evening, when he’d see Elnor again. If Ada observed him looking distracted, or any altered aspect of him, she didn’t bring it up.

“Most of the others want to stay for a while,” she said, sipping her smoothie. “And you’ll need someone to supervise the place once you’re gone.”

Hugh was surprised. “Are you… suggesting yourself?”

“Yes. The xBs here have improved so far now that they won’t need constant handholding. But if they want to make it on their own out here, they still need to be taught about the nuances of living as individuals. You’ve done a good job getting them started on that path, but I’m sure I can handle the minutiae. Working out individual strengths with each of them, helping them make their own way, also… community-building.”

“Community-building,” Hugh repeated. It had been starting to cause a strange taste in his mouth lately, as whispers rose of discontent, not just among his old friends but among the ‘new’ xBs here. Some of them had been taking trips over to Synthville lately, bonding with the Synths, which was of course a splendid thing, but there had been… whispering there, as well. The Synths had threatened to rise against the Organic oppressors, and it had worked out for them. The xBs were watching.

“You’re not planning to radicalize my xBs, are you?” Hugh asked. “They’ve been through enough here. They need rest and healing, not… whatever you’re up to.”

Ada shook her head. “I know. I’m up to nothing. Do you really think I’d draft these vulnerable people into a conflict before they’re ready? Do you trust me so little?”

Genuine hurt was flowing out from her mind, hitting Hugh in waves. He realized he had overstepped. His paranoia was just that, paranoia, and maybe he was overprotective of the xBs after everything that had happened. He took Ada’s hand.

_I do trust you,_ he said in their minds. _I never meant to cause you to believe otherwise._

Aloud, he said, “But your health?”

“I’ve been doing much better lately,” Ada said. “Having fewer off days. I’ve been feeling more… present, somehow, in the here and now. No longer just floating through life like I used to. I can’t tell you what changed, maybe therapy’s been reaching me more than it did, maybe just enough time has passed. I think I’ll be alright working here. Besides, your Doctor Beverly has promised to keep an eye on me in case things go bad again.”

Hugh felt himself to a double-take. “Beverly? You mean… Doctor Crusher? She’s not staying too, is she?”

Ada gave him a lopsided grin. “Oh, damn, I think she wanted to surprise you with it. Well, surprise ruined, I guess. Yeah, she’s been very interested in staying on, helping with everyone’s medical needs. Apparently she’s a bit of a cyberneticist too, so she’ll fit right in.”

Hugh smiled back, broader. It was partially a smile of relief. Beverly would be a wonderful aid, her empathy and gentle bedside manner just what was needed here. Things were being taken care of. For perhaps the first time in his life, he could… delegate something. It made his chest feel light. “That’s wonderful.”

“The place will be in good hands when you leave.”

_When you leave…_ she was treating it as a foregone conclusion that he’d go. Perhaps it was. And, well, he’d never wanted to come here in the first place, did he? Still, Hugh was surprised to feel a bit of a lump in his throat when he said, “You’ll send me regular status updates.”

Had he grown fond of the place? The Artifact, Coppelius? Much had happened to him here.

“Of course,” Ada said softly.

(As he left the table, Ramdha caught him by the door. Of late, she had grown into a speaker of sorts for the xBs on the Artifact, an intermediary, someone they came to with problems when Hugh was busy.

“Do you trust these people?” she asked. “That woman?”

“With my life,” Hugh told her.)

* * *

Elnor stepped off the warp pad, surveying La Sirena. It occurred to him only now that it had been weeks until he’d last been here. He had split his time, lately, between Coppelius station and the Artifact, spending time with his friends during the day and with Hugh in the evenings and at night. If any of the crew had noticed that he wasn’t spending the night at the station in the quarters that had originally been assigned to him, they didn’t bring it up.

Most of the crew were still at the station now, so the only person here to welcome him to the ship was the hospitality hologram.

“Hello,” Elnor greeted him. “Do you know if Picard is aboard? Raffi said she couldn’t find him at the station, so I presumed he would be here.”

“Admiral Picard is in his study,” Mr. Hospitality replied, perhaps a little tetchy that there was still no hospitality emergency his services were needed for. “Is there anything else you need from me?”

“No, thank you,” Elnor said. “I am only here to speak to Picard.” The hologram sketched a little bow and disappeared. (It was still a bit unnerving to Elnor, these disintegrating people. Speaking to someone and then the next moment, staring into empty air. But that was just how holograms were made, wasn’t it?)

Soon he stood in front of the holodeck, dithering a second before he plucked up the resolve to press the chime. The doors slid open, and Picard’s voice beckoned him to enter.

Picard sat at his desk, absorbed in a book. When he looked up and saw Elnor, he inserted a bookmark and put the book aside. He gave Elnor a smile, one that spoke of genuine happiness to see him, and a part of Elnor, somewhere in his chest, felt… refreshed.

“Ah, Elnor,” Picard said pleasantly. “That look on your face tells me you have a question for me?”

Elnor’s eyes lowered briefly to the ground. “Am I so easy to read?”

Picard was still smiling kindly. “Your ability to wear your heart on your sleeve is one of your best traits. Do not let anybody tell you otherwise.”

Elnor nodded, feeling heartened. “It’s true, I came to seek your guidance. May I sit with you?”

Picard gestured for him to pull up a chair. “Of course.” He went to the replicator and ordered two cups of tea for them. “Now, what’s the issue that requires my… guidance? I hope nothing’s been troubling you."

Elnor sat down opposite from Picard at the desk and took his tea. “I am at a fork in the road,” he said. “And what I do next might well dictate the course of my life.”

“Oh?” Picard’s eyebrows rose. Clearly he hadn’t been expecting this. “I was unaware that something of such… monumental importance had happened to you.”

For a moment, Elnor wasn’t sure how to begin. “When you came to Vashti to ask for my sword,” he said, “You did not actually require the service of a Qowat Milat warrior, did you? My being there for your mission was less than vital. You asked me in order to make amends with me, because you thought you were going to die. Is that not true?”

He saw Picard wince a little, in the way of people who were unused to Absolute Candor. Picard collected himself with admirable speed and said, “I… must admit, the topic of amends was on my mind, considering the progression of my condition. I surmised it would be my last chance to get out there, and I wanted to right some of the wrongs weighing on my mind. Leaving you behind, breaking my promise to you, was one. But Elnor, of course your presence was vital. You mustn’t think you weren’t of use.”

Privately, Elnor thought he hadn’t had much to do during that mission. “Be that as it may,” he said, “That mission has been concluded for a while. Soji is found, her people freed. My oath is rendered obsolete. And you are no longer dying, either, and everything that stood between us is forgiven. There is no purpose to my being here any longer, is there?”

Now that he said it like this, he felt he could barely get it past the lump in his throat. The apprehension that Picard might agree, might tell him there was no use for him on La Sirena anymore, caused unshed tears to prick at his eyes.

“Oh... Elnor, no,” Picard said. He sounded… startled, maybe? But, above all, his voice was endlessly compassionate. “There may be no more ‘mission’ for you here, but you still very much belong here. I am certain the rest of the crew shares my opinion in that matter. There will always be a place for you here. This ship, this crew… can be your home, if you want it. I had… hoped this was the case.”

Something in Elnor, some part of him that was still nine years old and waiting for the kind old man who had taught him fencing and read to him to come back and whisk him away into the stars, basked in this. A tension he hadn’t even known he carried within him relaxed now.

“But… what if I had pledged my sword anew?” he asked. “And… what if I had pledged not only my sword but also my heart? And what if I were beloved by the best, noblest, kindest man in all the galaxy, and what if that person was bearing the most hopeless cause imaginable? What more monumental thing could possibly have happened to me?”

“This is… not a hypothetical, I suppose?” Picard asked.

Elnor took a deep breath and looked down at his teacup. “It’s about Hugh.”

“Oh,” Picard said. “Hugh? Well… he is certainly facing nigh-insurmountable odds. I think Zani would be proud of you. As far as lost causes go, you have picked well.”

Elnor cocked his head. Was that all? He had expected… he knew not what. More of a reaction, somehow. “It is not just the cause. He also…” Here Elnor interrupted himself. How could he look at Picard, who had known him as a nine-year-old, and explain to him the look on Hugh’s face as they’d partaken in each other at the shore of the lake? How could he elaborate on the way Hugh’s smile knocked the breath out of his chest every time it revealed itself? The way he spoke, the way he walked, with such poise and purpose? Perhaps this was information Picard did not need to have. But he could tell him some other things, some that he believed Picard would think mattered.

“On Vashti,” he began, “my life was agreeable, for the most part. Perhaps sheltered. I know some people consider me so. But I saw what deprivation, poverty and lawlessness can drive people to do and think and express. I witnessed the town around the convent turn to a diminished, hostile place. But there is true nobility of spirit in some people, which stems from kindness. Hugh is that way. He makes me feel like I have found a jewel of pure light in a very dark place. I love him. I want to protect him wherever he goes. Anything I can do for him, I would not hesitate to do.”

“Hmmm.” Picard raised his cup to his lips and took a sip of tea. He looked thoughtful, contemplative. “And now you’re considering taking up with him, I suppose?” There was a note of something in his voice that Elnor couldn’t quite grasp. Oh, he hoped it was not disapproval.

“I am contemplating it, yes. Hugh is not sure where he will go next, but I know he will not be staying on Coppelius much longer.”

“Yes, well.” Picard set the cup down. “My connections to Starfleet Command aren’t what they used to be, but from what I hear, there is a rumor that the Federation has some kind of offer to make to Hugh. He may have his new project rather soon. And you would accompany him to whatever comes next? Have you discussed this with him?”

“Yes.”

“And what does Hugh say to that?”

“He… I think he likes the thought, but he cannot allow himself to want this at this time. He keeps saying that he’s afraid that the conditions under which he works will drive me away. He has suggested that I remain here, on La Sirena, for the time being, and that we stay in contact via subspace. But if I’m not with him, how can I fight for him? What kind of a Qalankhai would that make me?”

Picard seemed to mull this over, tapping a finger absentmindedly against his teacup. At last he said, “Hugh has grown into a prudent man.”

Elnor felt his shoulders sag. “You agree with him?”

“I agree with him insofar as this is a momentous choice for you to make, and there’s no need to rush into it,” Picard said. “And that the work he does is not for everyone.”

“Soji says so too,” Elnor admitted. He felt a strange sense of irritation grow within him. “It’s as if everybody thinks I’m not cut out for that work. Do they think I am weak? Faint of heart?”

“No one believes you are weak, Elnor,” Picard soothed. “But the study of the Borg is a… uniquely challenging field. And, admittedly, unpopular for that very reason. Yes, I imagine reclaiming an xB and drawing them out of their shell is hard work, but that’s not the only reason why few people will try. The Borg have caused so much destruction and devastation, have inflicted unspeakable trauma on so many. Their influence has been felt in every quadrant of the galaxy. For the average person, it takes a lot of self-examination to get to a place, mentally, in which one considers the Borg worthy of redemption.”

“The Borg cannot be so bad,” Elnor exclaimed, “if people like Hugh and Seven come from them.”

For a moment, Picard was silent. Some muscle in his face twitched, and Elnor watched in worry as the storm cloud came and went. Picard took a deep breath. “Elnor… people like Hugh and Seven are incredibly strong individuals who are taking on, every day, an arduous journey to escape from under the Borg’s shadow. In a way, what they do is opposite of the goals of the Borg. No one knows better than them what an evil place it is they left. If I were you, I wouldn’t voice the thought that the Borg ‘can’t be so bad’ around them. But we digress.”

Elnor folded his hands in his lap. Yes, he supposed, they had gotten a bit off topic. “So you think I should not go with Hugh?” he surmised, “To the evil place?”

“I think there is no need for you to rush a decision,” Picard repeated, “regarding how to spend your life. I think this is all very… sudden. You are young. You have only just embarked on this relationship, allow it room to grow. Hugh might simply be… overwhelmed by the prospect of deciding right now, while he is still recovering from the recent losses he’s taken, which way your lives together are going to proceed for the foreseeable future. He might feel a need to get back on his feet first before making any such far-reaching choices.”

Elnor considered this. It made sense, in a way. He had to admit, he’d met Hugh at a strange and fraught stage in both their lives. If Hugh needed time, well, they had time now that things had calmed down.

“But what about my oath?” he wondered. “I will not be able to fight for him if I’m not physically there.”

Picard nodded contemplatively. He gave himself a moment to think – which gratified Elnor, in a strange way, because it told him that his concern was being taken seriously. He then said, “Of course, your oath is important to you. I will not condescend to you by telling you there are things in life that are more so. But from what I’ve learned about the ways of your people, your oath encompasses more than just what you can do with your sword, anyway, doesn’t it? You can be there for Hugh in other ways. Apart from the tragic incident which our interference caused, I’m given to understand Hugh does not lead a violent life. He will need things like… emotional support, much more than he will need a warrior. And that you can provide even over a distance, can’t you?”

Elnor nodded, resolute. “I can.”

“Good.” Picard smiled at him. “Of course you can still change your mind. But let me tell you that among this crew, you’d be – ahem – sorely missed.”

* * *

The Trimatrix squad threw another party in the evening before La Sirena was scheduled to depart. This time, it was taking place on the Artifact, and it was fascinating to Hugh to see how with a little effort, they had managed to turn this former Borg cube into a festive environment. Multicolored fairy lights had started appearing out of seemingly nowhere, their bunkered Romulan ale was again flowing, and Six had somehow managed to plug his insufferable electric guitar into the Queencell. The channel that had once been intended to transmit shipwide orders from the Borg Queen now carried Six’s voice through the cube, entertaining partygoers with his xB twist on old Earth classics. In a way, Hugh supposed, also a reclamation of sorts.

Synths, xBs and their guests were mingling over drinks once more, some talking, some dancing. Hugh spotted Elnor in animated conversation with Captain Rios, who seemed to be enlightening him on the nuances of ancient Earth music, his preferred Blues and its evolution alongside the Classic Rock that Six was playing. He saw Soji, sporting a beauteous new cocktail dress and whispering something to Náashala, Doctor Soong leading Arcana in a dance, Geordi very much being led by Beverly. Ramdha was in attendance, seeming not at all fretful or disturbed by the crowd and the music, even allowing Ada to lead her by the hand up to the dancefloor they’d improvised in the mess hall. It did his heart good to spot so many of the xBs he had reclaimed by his own hands, engaging in the social activity with a new boldness that filled him with joy. He remembered them dazed, confused, frightened by these first days away from the Collective, some reacting to the transition by lashing out, some by withdrawing… and now…

_They’re going to be okay,_ he thought.

Hugh got a drink and maneuvered his way through the throngs of people, waving at everyone he knew, stopping to make small-talk every now and again, drifting gently but certainly towards the Queencell.

Six was in magnificent shape this evening – he always was, when there was an opportunity to perform. He’d set up a second, tiny drinks station near the console, at which Hugh stopped and poured himself a second drink as he watched Six perched on said console, crooning into the cube-wide comm system. How sweat glistened on his bare forearms in the unsteady colorful light, all ink and wiry, lean muscle. How his long, slim, deft fingers plucked at the guitar’s gleaming strings. Hugh remembered those fingers, a musician’s callouses on every tip. Hugh remembered those fingers trailing over his skin.

People were dancing here, too. Some were clustered around Six, xBs and never-Bs alike. Six seemed to be serenading one of the researchers, most likely just to keep his hand in. For a second, he took one hand off the guitar and reached for the young man, pulling him closer with a single finger under his jaw. The man, a young human – former Starfleet, Hugh remembered, still with a bit of that shine to him – seemed enraptured, lips parted, eyes wide—

_“Blue eyes,”_ Six crooned, _“oh baby blue, oh, blue eyes… the kind of eyes that say ‘I do’ eyes—”_

And, yep, he must’ve also plugged his mind in, because Hugh could hear more than just Six’s guitar. There was a beautiful, thrumming baseline, distant drums, probably Six’s near-eidetic memory of the song he was covering. He regarded the little spectacle with amusement, wondering what that researcher was thinking right now… when one dealt with freshly out-the-hivemind xBs, poor confused dears in need of care, it had to be a whammy to suddenly be hit with Six…

Hugh put his drink down on the console. _“He was a playboy of this Western world,”_ he chimed in, perfectly on cue and pitch – this another little gift from the Collective. It was what made xB singers so extraordinary.

Six turned around, his whole face lighting up in a grin. “Come to listen, grand liberator?”

_My staff aren’t your groupies,_ Hugh sent him over the mind-link. Combined with an indulgent half-smile, there was no real bite in it.

_Yet,_ Six transmitted back.

They laughed.

_Besides, you’re leaving,_ Six thought at Hugh. _All the more time for me to grow closer to your lovely staff._

He didn’t say a word about the patients, and no thought of them was in his mind, not in relation to the current topic, and for that Hugh loved him.

“I love you,” he said.

Six raised an eyebrow. “What, out loud?”

Hugh smiled at him over the rim of his cup. There really had never been a reason to hide the sentiment in the mind-link, to smuggle it into each other’s thoughts. “I love you out loud, Six.”

In the flickering multi-colored light, with his guitar still strapped to his chest, with the singing and dancing going on all around them, for a moment Six looked deeply at peace. “You’re drunk,” he accused then.

Hugh set his cup down again. “Not really.” He stepped closer, close enough to feel Six’s breath. “You, however, smell of kali-fal.”

“Sweated it all out,” Six claimed. “Performing is hard work.”

Just as he moved to get off the console, Hugh put a hand on his thigh. “Let Ley do some singing for a while.”

“My liberator commands me, and I follow,” Six purred, putting the guitar aside, reaching out for Hugh and finding him. It was familiar, from back when, how Six’s hands molded themselves to his waist, his hips, his thighs, his rear. Hugh shivered, thrilled. This was different from Elnor; where Elnor touched him almost with reverence, Six touched him with… intent. Hugh hesitated to call it possessive. It wasn’t. It was the touch of a person who knew it would be reciprocated with enthusiasm.

Hugh got on his tiptoes and kissed Six.

“You sure your Rom’s okay with this?” Six asked in between kisses.

“ _My Rom_ and I have discussed this exhaustively.” Hugh cupped Six’s face in his hands, thumb brushing the implant below his jaw. He’d always enjoyed, back when, the light scratch of Six’s stubble against his skin. Elnor would not grow facial hair. “Discussed you, in fact, exhaustively. He doesn’t see a problem with it.”

“Am I ever flattered.” He’d probably read Hugh’s mind, too, because he ducked his head and rubbed his stubbled cheek against Hugh’s throat, his mouth leaving small love-bites in his wake.

“You…” Hugh ran his hands down Six’s back, blunt nails lightly scraping skin under that dark tank top he was wearing. _You started that ‘liberator’ nonsense again._

In the comparative privacy of the telepathic headspace, Six was more frank than in words. _You are, though,_ he thought with something worryingly close to fervor. _You are our liberator. You are our Little Queen. You are the first of many. For you we’d do so many things. Not because we’d crave leadership, stars beware, but because you’ve earned it. For you we’d take up arms. Let us take up arms._

Hugh groaned. What a wonderful moment for this debate again. _Don’t let’s start._

Six kissed him again, deeply, tongue sliding into Hugh’s open mouth. _When will we stop tolerating these myriad injustices? When will we get them to accept us as their equals? When? When?_

Hugh’s fingers clenched into the fabric of his tank top, nails digging into skin underneath. _You know my stance. No violence. That’s not who we are anymore._

Six’s hands pawed at him, increasingly clumsy with desire. Hugh found himself pressed close to Six’s body as the kissing grew sloppier, more intense. Six’s thoughts, also, were tumbling all over themselves, _For so long you’ve been treated like shit, what will it take? Will it break you before it gets you angry? I’m afraid of that, I just want to make a better future, for you, for Ley, for those that come after us, I love you so much, I love you, I love you. My Little Queen, I love you._

Suddenly Six detached, groping blindly for something on the console. His searching hand found an isolinear rod, which he plugged into its slot on his amplifier.

“What is this?” Hugh asked.

“Federation Top 100 Summer Jams,” Six said, breathless. “For them to dance to. You know. While we’re busy.”

* * *

The evening had long progressed into night as Hugh stepped off the Artifact for a breather. He liked socializing, he genuinely did, but sometimes even he needed a break, just a moment of quiet and cool night air to ground and center him, let him regain his equilibrium.

He stood on the wooden platform that the xBs had recently finished constructing, nursed a half-empty, tepid drink and looked out onto the lake. The strobing, multicolored lights from within the Artifact illuminated the water in dancing spots, it looked pretty. For a moment, Hugh wished Elnor was here, so they could jump in together one last time. But Elnor was inside; currently he and Ramdha were attempting to show a group of amused onlookers a traditional Romulan dance. How strange, Hugh thought, that tomorrow he wouldn’t just get up and go about his day as usual, probably spending all morning assisting with the cleanup. He would leave the planet instead. The thought made his stomach clench with nerves; he took a sip of his drink to calm it, hoping it would wash away his worries for the time being. He knew that leaving was the right step, but something in him felt reluctant.

Only as he walked a few steps, he realized that he wasn’t alone on the platform. He heard the voices first, two of them slightly raised in argument (more banter than fight, Hugh classified), then he spotted their two shapes. One was Picard, which wasn’t awfully surprising. Hugh was surprised the old man had stayed on the cube as long as he had. The other belonged to a man Hugh didn’t know, tall, a tad soft around the edges, his hair a distinguished silver. They spotted Hugh and fell silent, and Hugh felt as though he had intruded upon something private, maybe even secret.

“Pardon me,” he said.

Picard gave him a friendly smile. “Good evening. Enjoying the night air as well?”

Picard’s companion took a second to scrutinize Hugh, in a manner that made him feel strangely more exposed, more… seen than an ordinary once-over should warrant. “Ah,” he said. “You’re that little waif Jean-Luc and his primate friends fished out of the Borg, aren’t you? The little Borg drone that could. Charmed, I’m sure.”

Hugh felt himself bristle. “Have we met?” Down below the gauzy haze of alcohol and decades of more or less ignoring it, his cortical node kicked into gear. The Collective knew this person. That face, younger in appearance, Byronic features… and something was weird about that face. The few dignified wrinkles it displayed seemed like… like they’d been placed there on purpose by a deliberative mind rather than the product of normal aging.

It took the penny a second to drop. “Species 42,” Hugh said.

Picard’s companion put on a pout of distaste. “If you must. Though I do prefer… Q.”

“Q,” Hugh echoed. “I know some folks who are very keen on having you in their hivemind.”

“Oh, I bet,” the Q entity replied, smirking. “I must’ve given them more trouble than that omega particle they’re so obsessed with.”

“The less said about the Omega particle, the better.” While Hugh’s mouth ran the small-talk routine on autopilot, his mind was coming to terms with the fact that there was a god-being of reality-bending, star-rattling nigh-omnipotence right in front of him. From what he knew of Q (from the Collective database and the few publicly available Enterprise logs he’d skimmed, on some lonely night when he’d missed his old friends) he’d gleaned that this Q entity was neither outright malevolent nor very inclined to use his powers to anyone’s benefit. He seemed… amusement-motivated. He liked games and tests. Perhaps he was playing some sort of long game inscrutable to the mortal mind in order to enlighten humanity in some way. Maybe he simply enjoyed dicking around. “So what brings you to my cube?”

“I could take or leave your cube,” Q said with a dismissive hand gesture. “I’m here for Jean-Luc, obviously.”

Hugh looked from him to Picard, who straightened his back and did his utmost to appear stoic. It occurred to him that this Q must have aged his physical form to match Picard, a gesture that betrayed some unspoken tenderness.

_A-ha,_ Hugh thought.

“A pity,” he said. “I had been wondering if you’d been keeping track of things for your Continuum.”

“Oh, no,” Q replied. “I’m the Q for humans. Q is the one assigned to monitor the Borg and all related flotsam. Well, of course I check in with her sometimes to keep abreast of any meaningful changes.”

Hugh gestured at the Artifact behind him. “Is this a meaningful change?”

Q was suddenly a lot closer to Hugh’s personal space, almost touching him as he appraised him once more. “We’ll see."

“Oh indeed?” Hugh said, while mentally some cogs were trying to turn. He knew there was a rumor, vague yet persistent, that the Q Continuum took a vested interest in what happened to humanity but also to the Borg. Existing outside of linear space-time, the Continuum had some awareness of the future. People had speculated that at some point, humanity and the Borg would influence each other in a way that would in turn influence the Q, or even that perhaps, the way both species were progressing, both humans and the Borg held within them the hidden potential to grow to equal or even surpass the Q. Certainly no one could want an omnipotent Borg Collective.

Humanity and the Borg had collided enough already to evoke significant change in each other. At first that had been a rather lopsided process, marked by such occasions as the battle at Wolf 359. But the first significant dent the humans had made in the Borg, well, Hugh could say without bragging that he saw it every morning in the bathroom mirror.

Hoping dearly that he still knew how to do this, Hugh brushed that one wayward lock of hair out of his face and said, “Perhaps we can… enlighten each other.”

The Q entity smirked. “What exactly are you suggesting?”

“Well…” Hugh shrugged. “There’s not much I can offer an omnipotent person, I suppose. A bit of fun, maybe, if you go in for that. But even so it would hardly be an equal exchange. I’m pretty much just asking outright if you could do anything with your powers to improve my people’s situation.”

Picard had been silent so far. Now he raised his head abruptly. “Is this a wise course of action?” he asked sharply. “Starfleet has, as a rule, never accepted favors from Q—”

“I’m not in Starfleet, Admiral,” Hugh said.

“I can only advise caution. I didn’t think you’d want to pursue alliances with a being so capricious, so morally ambiguous—”

“You flatter me, Jean-Luc…”

“I will ally with anyone who promises to enact positive change on behalf of my people. I will do this out of sheer necessity. But what would the Organics of the Federation know of struggle?"

"Well, we have seen our fair share of-"

"You’re not getting diced up for parts. You’ve never had to rip out an implant and sell it for sustenance. You had high-end medical care, a support network, people who were understanding—”

“I should think that the experience—”

“You weren’t ripped out of the Borg and tossed away to rot at the first opportunity—”

“Gentlemen.” Q snapped his fingers. At once, Hugh felt himself return, quite jarringly, to complete sobriety. “We were having such a pleasant talk not a minute ago! I derive no amusement from listening to your insignificant mortal squabble.”

Hugh rubbed his arms. It was like, from one second to another, all the alcohol had fled his system. “There was no need to do that.”

Really, he had thought he’d calmed down about things by now. But that anger that had led him to contemplate an ill-fated revolt against Narissa that distant day he’d almost died was still there, simmering under the surface.

“It was not my intention to make light of your people’s struggle,” Picard murmured. “I only meant to warn you. I have dealt with Q extensively in the past, and his deals and bargains rarely work out for the parties involved. He cannot be trusted in these things.”

“I am right here, Jean-Luc,” Q said.

Hugh took a deep breath. “I… thank you. But I can make my own choices.”

Q spread his arms. “Well, would that I could help you. But ever since the civil war, we in the Continuum have been attempting to handle our powers responsibly. I cannot snap and make you the ex-Borg Queen of the Alpha Quadrant. The Continuum would never sanction such an interference. Besides, do you not want to earn it yourself, by the work of your own hands?”

“Personal accomplishments, yes, I suppose. But not my basic humanoid rights. Those should be a given,” Hugh said.

“Ideally.” Q shrugged. “And yet, there is much conflict yet to come for you, if the Continuum divined this correctly - and I know we did. I can’t say what the future holds exactly, but I can tell you this: your life is about to get amazingly interesting.”

“Any hints you can give me?” Hugh asked.

"No,” Q said, “The Continuum can discern myriads of possible futures for your little cause, depending on what decisions you’ll go on to make. I’ve no idea which one it’ll be. In a significant number of these futures, you die. In some of them, you’re already dead. In some versions you fail, in a few you succeed, through manifold means. There is no one clear path you must go.”

Hugh sighed. “Go figure.”

“But…” Q cocked his head as if deliberating, “there is something I can impart to you without doing any harm. Let’s see…”

He put a hand on Hugh’s chest. There was a diamond flash of white light. Hugh’s vision whited out.

When it returned, he was no longer standing on the platform.

He saw…

He saw the Artifact, now in the sunlight, and more xBs on it than there were now. Freshly reclaimed xBs, older xBs in caretaking roles, the former Borg cube transformed into a vibrant recreational facility. Here, xBs could come to find help in coping with readjusting to life outside the Collective, under the supervision of a sympathetic, caring staff, aided by state-of-the-art reclamation technology. The most excellent and adventurous members of the psychiatric profession travelled many lightyears for a chance to work and study here. The xBs here led fulfilling lives, marked by the mutual aid of their community and their deep friendship with the nearby Synths. They were safe, and they were content.

He saw Ada exhibiting her artwork in the Tate. Scholars from all over the Federation discussed her masterpiece, that still-life ‘Cortical Node and Sunflowers’, as an enigmatic example of xB art. She gave lectures at colleges on the philosophy of reclamation, teaching droves of students every day to fear the ex-Borg a little less. He saw Ellie on the grand catwalk at Betazed, lavished with adoration by scores of impeccably-dressed women. He saw Cal, renowned civil rights lawyer throughout the alpha quadrant, assisting the Federation Board in drafting legislation for equal rights for all xBs. He saw Six and Ley in the house they could finally afford, platinum albums lining their walls, and the Borg baby they always joked about trying for (it was never a joke, really) on their plush living room carpet, attempting to gnaw on a Univision Music Award.

He saw Seven of Nine, finally secure in a woman who loved her, with her friends both new and old surrounding her. She was not part of a Collective, but she was not ever alone.

And he saw himself on a stage, a tad more silver in his hair, in his nicest suit, implants polished to shining, and the Federation president was there and was… yes… awarding him the Archer medal for his lifelong humanitarian work. Hugh glanced into the audience and saw Picard there, next to Beverly and Geordi, and they were all looking upon him with warmth and so much pride. His friends were all there and they were looking gorgeous, and Elnor, too, and he caught Hugh’s eye and waved, the light catching on the ring on the fourth finger of his left hand.

And then time unspooled and he saw the vast expanse of the galaxy, and across all four quadrants, like brilliant lights in the nothingness, one after the other, xB colony worlds appeared, empty planets for them to populate, planets filled with indigenous life for them to coexist with, in peace in equal dignity. Now generations passed by in the blink of an eye and finally, finally there came a day when there was no more Borg Collective. Just xBs, trillions of them, healing and living to their hearts’ content. Safe. Protected. Beloved.

Free.

And Hugh understood what Q had given him. The best ending. Perhaps a fleeting thing, a one-in-a-million chance. But the Q Continuum had seen it, and that meant… that it was possible. Things could turn out in such a way that everyone was happy.

And now he was standing on the platform again, with Q delicately removing his fingers from his chest. The white diamond of light receded into nothing, and Hugh realized that all of this had been imparted within a second.

“There,” Q said, something almost fatherly sneaking into his tone. “Are we feeling a little braver now?”

“Yes.” Hugh nodded. He became aware that he was crying. He couldn’t contain it. He stood on the platform crying long after Q and Picard had gone off somewhere together, no doubt to have some sedate old man fun. Hugh hadn’t even known it, but he’d needed this. A silver lining, something to hold on to, something to remind him what it was all for.

A reminder that there _was_ hope.

He’d just about finished weeping when Elnor found him. By this point he was spinning with relief and happiness and feeling daring, reckless, so he jumped off the platform and into the dark, cool waters of the lake, knowing that Elnor would follow.


	7. Every Day With Someone New

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Howdy yall!
> 
> I'm considering making this work part of a series: you know, stop here and start the new plotline in a whole new fic. Might be better than cramming it all into one thing. I'm thinking about it. This is, if anything, the story of Hugh being ever-so-slowly radicalized, and that process is not finished, but it's entering its second act after this chapter.
> 
> This was seriously meant to be shorter, but then I got carried away with imagining what a therapy session for Hugh might look like. Also the whole thing with Picard, because I wanted /something/ to happen in the La Sirena segment, and then had to treat y'all to another sex scene. Let me know if you liked it or have any thoughts about it!
> 
> The friend-of-a-friend pipeline btw went Beverly -> Deanna -> Worf -> Ezri (it's my fic and I get to have any characters I want in it)

Hugh rose at dawn. He double-checked his luggage that contained the few personal belongings he had brought to the Artifact. He dressed, and for the first time in a while, he shaved his face.

Saying goodbye to the Artifact and its inhabitants felt bizarre, dreamlike. Hugh had worked here for all these years; at one point he’d believed that he would die here. His memories of the majority of his time here weren’t fantastic, for so long this place had felt like a prison. But now it was something else. It had changed so much recently, and good things had begun happening here, and all in all Hugh couldn’t deny that while he wouldn’t go so far as to say he’d become fond of the former Borg vessel, it definitely _meant_ something to him. He had slept in this room for all this time. Here he’d kissed Elnor for the first time, here they’d made love for the first time. Now the room was barren, purged of all traces of his personality. Someone else would take it soon, maybe Ada, who’d stash her sketchbooks on his shelves and fill his space with canvas and the smell of paint. And he was saying goodbye to a diverse set of people: Beverly and Geordi, whom he’d known all his life, his oldest friends and former cubemates, and the xBs and researchers from this cube, whom he’d worked with for years.

Some of the denizens of the station had come to bid goodbye as well, the ladies who'd helped with the gardening project all wanted hugs. Altan Soong gave Hugh a brief handshake, and they parted ways with some ambivalent feelings on both sides. As he was beamed up into orbit where La Sirena waited, Hugh couldn’t help but try to strain his eyes until the very last nanosecond before he dematerialized for one last glimpse of the Artifact.

He barely got a glimpse of his new location before he was enveloped in a hug. “You’re here!” Elnor announced gleefully. “You’re actually coming with us!”

Hugh huffed a laugh. “Only to Earth. I’ll get off in San Francisco and find myself something to do there.”

“Still. Are you going to be sleeping in my room for the duration of the journey? If the Hospitality Hologram does not mind, we could even…” Elnor lowered his voice to a hushed whisper, “…push the beds together.”

 _He’s adorable,_ Hugh thought. “I’d be pleased to.”

Elnor beamed. “Come on, let me show you around!”

* * *

The journey back to Earth was, at first, a tranquil one. Hugh slept in Elnor’s room and spent his days in conversation with the crew or catching up on any Federation news he’d missed on Coppelius. With the xBs of the Artifact far away, the hum of the mind-link had faded into a gentle background buzz, any single voice only becoming distinct if Hugh focused specifically on it. Apart from some occasional stray wisp of thought from Seven, his head was quiet. It felt like a tiny mini-vacation after the other, longer vacation.

He spent as much of his time as possible with Elnor. On the Artifact, there had been so much else to do and so many different places to be, but here on this small freighter, it was easy to constantly be near Elnor. Not only did he sleep and cohabit with Elnor, they’d mostly take their meals together and share in most recreational activities. Elnor would join him reading or trawling through subspace, and still heroically persist in his effort to teach him Rihan, and Hugh would watch Elnor practice his swordsmanship on the holodeck. After such a practice session, with the energy and adrenaline running high on Elnor’s part, and Hugh pleasantly electrified by watching his beautiful lover take on holographic opponents and do swirling spins in midair and the like, they would often retire to their room to make love. Those were good days.

And every day, Earth got a little closer.

* * *

It was strange, Seven opined, having Hugh on La Sirena. While she definitely considered herself having a bond with him – he was who she’d turned to after the Bjayzl fiasco, knowing that he wouldn’t judge her for making the mistake of trusting that woman – she couldn’t say she’d ever cohabited with Hugh. Now she got to witness him stumble into the mess hall in the mornings, half-asleep in search of coffee. She got to witness Captain Rios’s many fruitless attempts to beat him at poker. And she got to hear the interesting noises from Elnor’s room in the nights.

Elnor stuck to Hugh like glue. It was odd with Elnor. In the years since Voyager, Seven had become more astute at reading expressions, gestures, body language, and she observed that, before Hugh had entered the scene, Elnor had often seemed… lost on the ship. It only became noticeable in retrospect, now that it was absent, now that Hugh’s presence lent Elnor a surety, a carefreeness that hadn’t been there before. Seven remembered when she’d been Elnor’s age, back when she’d just been taken in on Voyager. Her individual personality taking hold had been a maelstrom of chaos, but she still had never felt insecure in her standing on the ship. It was not the xB way. The Borg, for all their myriad faults, imbued every drone with the sense that they were as close to absolute perfection as any resident of this galaxy could get. Adaptable, nigh-indestructible, Borg drone: Seven had always felt a core certainty that she was up to integrating herself in any environment she needed to. In a way, Hugh was similar, if inverted in his method: Seven’s surety had been founded on her valuable skillset, her knowledge and yes, her nanoprobes that could fix so many things aboard an intrepid starship in constant need of repairs with an easily-damaged crew. Hugh had, from the cataclysmic moment at which he had been told to assume the part of a civil leader, grounded himself in his rapidly budding people skills. To Seven, this concept was still alien.

The point was, even with their Collective guilt, it was not easy to make an xB feel self-conscious. Not even relentless prejudice ever quite managed. Societal standards, the Borg taught, were arbitrary. But Elnor, in the pre-Hugh days, had moved and spoken like he doubted his right to presence on this ship. But now, Elnor had a cause. And it was a big one. And it gave him… legitimacy, in his mind.

As was quite common in xB communities, Hugh calmly scanned that train of thought right alongside Seven having it. _It is troubling,_ he said.

 _Not my business, really,_ Seven projected, but harbored no illusion that Hugh couldn’t catch the emotional carryon that dragged along underneath the statement. Layers of thought and feeling. She had come to care for Elnor quite a bit. She wondered if latching onto cause after cause, defining himself by his usefulness to others, was healthy for him.

 _It's one more reason for him to stay with you guys for a while,_ Hugh said. This conversation was happening completely silently across the mess hall, Seven at one table with Raffi, Hugh at another playing some kind of Romulan card game with Elnor while Picard was watching them in interest.

_He needs friends, much more than he needs a new cause right now. He needs to find his own voice, realize his own worth. He’s so much more than what he can do for me._

_Are you going to decide that for him?_ Seven asked. _You’re not his therapist. You sound like you’re talking about an xB two weeks reclaimed._

On the other end of the room, Hugh sniffed indignantly. _Am not._

_Let me point out that he is in the room, and we’re talking about him, and we’re not doing it out loud. Will you tell him about this?_

Hugh shook his head. _I hadn’t considered it._

 _I might tell Raffi,_ Seven said, out of an impulse to do so. If that thing with Raffi was going to get more serious, develop staying power, then wasn’t it only fair that Raffi be told about the mind-link? It wasn’t like other xBs watched them have sex or anything like that. Still, it was a huge thing to keep quiet, such an intrinsic part of xB life.

Outwardly, Hugh didn’t react beyond a slight widening of his eyes, a brief flickering glance in her direction. Mentally, Seven felt him jolt. _You’re kidding, right_? He asked sharply. _Annika, she’s Starfleet Intelligence!_

 _Not anymore she isn’t,_ Seven thought back.

 _It doesn’t matter,_ Hugh argued. _I can glean from your memories of her that Starfleet never really left her. It gets its claws in deep, if you let it._

 _So? You don’t trust her? You don’t trust my partner?_ Seven’s fingers started drumming on the metal tabletop. She thought that Raffi… felt right. Felt safe, past Starfleet career or no. Surely Hugh, like any other person, could be unreasonably paranoid sometimes. Still… the last time he’d said he didn’t trust one of Seven’s lovers, he’d been talking about Bjayzl, and he’d been brushed off, and he’d been completely correct.

Obviously, Hugh experienced the welling up of memories and fears in Seven’s mind along with her. She felt him take a deep, calming breath. _I don’t know that much about her. She seems okay,_ he said, summoning his stores of reason to him. _It’s not up to me to vet your partners. I know asking you to keep secrets from your girlfriend would be an asshole thing to do._ _But you can’t just tell a never-B about the mind-link. We all made a promise to keep it to ourselves. It’s the only edge we’ve got on them, in case._

The thought was interrupted in the middle, Seven noted. Was there something here that Hugh didn’t want to talk about, not even to her? Or was it a thought that he couldn’t even consider voicing, not even to himself?

 _In case of what?_ She asked.

 _It might be a valuable organizing tool,_ Hugh supplied. _Like an underground network._ _When the time comes._

_The time for what?_

But Hugh was shutting that lane of conversation down. His mind closed itself off, slipped gently from Seven’s grasp. She watched as, across the room, he pretended to focus on the game.

Puzzling.

* * *

It was the evening of Hugh’s third day on La Sirena and someone was ringing the chime to his and Elnor’s shared quarters.

It was a rather inopportune moment for it, with the both of them laid out on Elnor’s bed, with Elnor fresh from the sonic shower and about to snake a hand into Hugh’s sleep-shirt.

“Shall we ignore it?” Elnor whispered, and Hugh seriously considered it for a moment, but his sense of politeness won out. He made his way a bit listlessly to the door, wondering who would turn up at this time and pull him away from his warm bed and Romulan.

He found himself face to face with Picard.

This was a bit awkward. They hadn’t really spoken ever since their last night on the Artifact. Hugh could well remember snapping at him and attempting to facilitate relations with his… well… his Q entity. He couldn’t really bring himself to feel sorry for it, not after the various things Picard had done to him over the years which he hadn’t so far thought to apologize for. But he still did abhor this awkwardness. Perhaps the man was looking for an apology from _him_ for his conduct?

“Good evening, Hugh,” Picard said. He didn’t seem mad in any way. That boded well.

“Admiral,” Hugh said neutrally.

“Hello, Picard!” Elnor, back in the room, piped up in a cheery manner. Hugh glanced back at him and saw him waving at Picard with a big smile. Clearly Elnor was very happy to see Picard, and Hugh felt cheered up a bit by proxy.

“I meant to speak with you,” Picard said. “I can see now that it… might not be a good time? Perhaps I can come back tomorrow.”

“Oh, we have not started yet.” Hugh smiled and watched as Picard grew subtly flustered. “Now is perfectly fine.” Inwardly, he wondered what Picard wanted to discuss, and knew that if he waited until tomorrow to hear it, the suspense would plague him all night, to the point at which not even Elnor could distract him.

They ended up sitting down in the mess hall, Picard with his decaf Earl Grey, Hugh with a large hot chocolate, because it was late, and even his coffee habit had its limits.

“You know,” Picard said, “Since last we spoke, I have given what you said some further consideration. I realize that my conduct towards you has been… less than satisfactory.”

Hugh cocked his head, waiting, wondering. Was this _actually_ an attempt to apologize?

“From the beginning, the actions taken with regards to your person have been… how shall I phrase it… lackluster? We could have tried harder to come up with an alternative to sending you back to the Collective. We could have given you further guidance and protection after dispatching of Lore. I could have attempted to… refrain from exposing you to that mess with the Zhat Vash.”

“There is no way you could have possibly done that,” Hugh said softly, because that last one was one he could handle. Perhaps this was instinctual by now, this need to alleviate the man’s conscience, comfort him, deflect attention from himself and see this conversation done. “Soji was already present on the Artifact, as well as several Zhat Vash agents. A Zhat Vash agent caused the severance of the Artifact from the Collective in the first place. I was already involved, I just didn’t know it.”

“Yet I could have at least tried to keep the collateral damage to you and your community to a minimum. Perhaps there was an option other than just leaving you there with Elnor—”

“…From which sprang the romance of a lifetime, so thank you, really…”

“Our interactions seem to be littered with third options never taken.”

“Perhaps.” Hugh shrugged. “I realize that you probably saw weirder shit than me every other week in those days. Running the flagship… it was all grander than me.”

“You are the first of a new race, Hugh,” Picard said gently, as if having to remind him. “You’re helping a new people into the world, and nobody within the Federation seems to regard this as the monumental shift in the political arena of the Alpha Quadrant that it is. What’s grander than that? But it’s not simply about politics; the fact is that you were a young, newly emerged personality, with all the vulnerability that entails, and I had the chance to take you under my protection twice as I should have, and I did not. I can only offer my sincere apology.”

“Accepted,” Hugh said, because it was the quickest way to get this over with. In truth, there were complicated feelings here, and if he delved too deep into them, perhaps he would find frustration there, betrayal, even anger. He did not want those feelings. Nothing was ever going to come of them. Yes, anger could be productive, but what was there for him to point his anger at? The Federation would not change, and neither would Picard. The man would walk away from this talk, conscience cleared, and put Hugh out of his mind again once the next great adventure began.

“And I am an xB as well,” Picard added, as though Hugh hadn’t interrupted, “much as I’d like to forget it.”

To his own considerable shock, Hugh found himself trying to stifle a laugh.

Really! He was scandalized with himself. Picard had obviously been Borg, if only shortly, and the experience was obviously still weighing on him. Of _course_ he was an xB. Of _course_ he had every right to the label.

He just reckoned, over the years, one definitive trait he’d begun associating with the xB identity had been… constant existential peril. Picard didn’t quite fit the bill. Picard had a whole other life and prestigious career apart from the xB identity. Picard had his cushy chateau back on Earth and people who looked after him. No one was going to try and dig any Borg parts out of him, no one was going to push him around based on what he had so briefly been…

Hugh banished these thoughts from his mind. They were unfair.

“Yes, well,” he said eloquently.

“I might have done more, don’t you think?” Picard asked, clearly rhetorically. “I could have looked you and your project up much sooner.”

“Well, that would have been nice for me. Maybe not so nice for yourself and your own mental health. Prioritizing your peace of mind over more Borg business is completely understandable. You’re well within rights to heal at your own pace.” Slipping back into the role of the therapist was easy.

“Arguably I have not—” Picard cut himself off and sighed. “I did not approach you to have you justify my actions. All I wanted was… to give you something, a small gift that I thought you might like.”

He reached into the pocket of his gray old-man-jacket and produced an isolinear rod. “It’s from the old Enterprise D,” he explained. “Much of the logs and related recordings from that time have been made available to the public, but this has remained classified. I do not know if it will mend relations between us, I simply thought it… right for you to have it.”

“Thank you,” Hugh said, wondering what in all the stars was on that rod.

* * *

He watched it the following evening on the holodeck. Elnor was with him, and Soji had come in with Elnor. While he plugged it in, Seven and Raffi entered, having evidently searched for Picard, and decided to hang around for a chat.

“New holoprogram?” Seven asked.

“Not sure,” Hugh said. “Picard gave me this last night, implied I should watch it.”

“If it’s JL’s, it’s probably something extremely pretentiously high-brow,” Raffi opined. “Have you ever let slip you want to get into Shakespeare? It’s that or horses.”

Hugh wasn’t particularly enthused about Shakespeare or horses, so he shrugged. “Computer, play recording.”

The first thing he heard was Picard’s voice, nigh-unchanged by the intervening years.

_“Captain's log, stardate 45854.2. The Enterprise is charting six star systems that make up the Argolis cluster, an area being considered for colonization.”_

It seemed to be pretty standard stuff, Enterprise business as usual. They discovered an unknown signal from one of the moons and went after it, in case it was a distress call. It was the sort of thing Hugh reckoned the Enterprise crew had done every other day. Yet still… the Argolis cluster… why did that ring familiar?

Next were the transmissions from the away team. They had found a small, defunct craft, no survivors but one… and as the bridge crew began arguing how to proceed with the injured Borg they’d found, Hugh understood what he was witnessing here.

Picard had gifted him the record of his own genesis.

There were some visual recordings of the holding cell in the Enterprise’s brig. Hugh watched as a pale, disoriented kid bogged down by the clunky Borg exoplating that had gone out of Collective fashion three decades ago examined the walls of the small, bare room for a hive interlink. Again and again he searched the walls, scouring for somewhere to plug into, and the Borg didn’t do frantic, but there was something in the kid’s automatic, repetitive motions that engendered pity.

“God, I just want to help the little guy,” Hugh muttered, earning him a laugh from Seven. She playfully punched his arm, more a light brush of knuckles than an actual blow.

“He is you,” she reminded him, chuckling.

Hugh grinned back at her. “Not yet, but he’s on his way there.”

Elnor looked between the image on the viewscreen and Hugh by his side. “ _That_ is you?”

“As I said, not quite yet. Keep watching.”

_“We are Borg,” the drone that was to become Hugh said on the viewscreen, in that reverb-y voice that sent a shiver down present Hugh’s back. “You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile.”_

_“Just look around you, pal,” said Geordi, looking strapping from behind like that. “You're hardly in a position to make any demands.”_

Elnor pointed at him. “Geordi?”

Hugh nodded.

“He looks younger.”

“This happened a while ago.”

_The Borg didn’t teach you conversational skills. So the drone said, “We must return to the Collective.”_

_A spark of curiosity seemed to ignite in Geordi. Hugh remembered that to him, this was the first time he’d ever had an opportunity to learn about the Borg by speaking to a drone. “Who’s we?”_

_“We are Borg.”_

_“Yeah, but there's only one of you. Do you have a name? A means of identification?”_

_“Third of Five.”_

“Third of Five?” Elnor echoed,

_just as Geordi asked, “Is that it? Just a number?”_

Hugh shook his head. “Don’t wear it out.”

He watched as Geordi affixed his improvised energy conduit to the wall for the drone that was to become Hugh to derive energy. The second kindness he had ever been paid in his life, second only to Beverly healing him and bringing him aboard. His young self was of course entirely disoriented by it, unsure how to respond, clueless as to why anyone not of the Borg would do anything for him. He nodded to himself. Purely by instinct, Geordi was following what would later become several key deassimilation protocols. Providing little kindnesses to new xBs, getting them accustomed to altruism as a concept and also a feeling of safety even outside the hivemind, while at the same time gently chipping away at Borg-installed thought-patterns by asking his name, questioning the collective ‘we’… Hugh had to applaud him.

The following visuals had been taken in what looked like a science lab. The sequence opened on Beverly and Geordi, apparently questioning the kid that was to become Hugh. Hugh remembered the tests they’d run with him. He vaguely wondered what kind of information they had gleaned from that.

_“We don't have designations. We have names,” Beverly was explaining. “I'm Beverly. This is Geordi.”_

_“Do we have a name?” the little drone asked. Hugh found himself holding his breath, even as he knew how this had gone back then. He wanted to pat the kid on the shoulder for his speedy progress, but again remembered that it was him._

_“Do you want one?” Geordi asked._

_After some confused back-and-forth, Beverly tried the introductions again. “Okay, now. I’m Beverly.”_

_“I’m Geordi.”_

_“We are Hugh.”_

Hugh felt his eyes begin to sting. It was only just now settling in that he was witnessing one of the most important moments of his life, if not _the_ most important. His naming. Among the xBs, in the present, they’d begun celebrating naming days. It was a crucial first step away from the hive and towards individuality.

“Can we see the exact stardate this was recorded?” he asked.

Seven, of course, caught on to what Hugh was thinking. “Now we have your exact birthday.”

“I expect you replicate me a gift next year, or I’ll be offended.”

Meanwhile, the recording was still running, now displaying a scene in the Enterprise’s briefing room. Hugh could see Picard, sitting in a chair at the top of the long conference table, as well as Geordi and Data, pointing out something on a viewscreen.

_“How can a geometric form disable a computer system?” Picard was asking._

_“The shape is a paradox, sir,” Data explained. “It cannot exist in real space or time.”_

_“When Hugh's imaging apparatus imprints this on his biochips, he'll try to analyze it,” Geordi continued._

_“He will be unsuccessful, and will store the shape in his memory banks. It will be shunted to a subroutine for further analysis.”_

_“Then when the Borg download his memory, it'll be incorporated it into their network, then they'll try to analyze it.”_

_“It is designed so that each approach they take will spawn an anomalous solution. The anomalies are designed to interact with each other, linking together to form an endless and unsolvable puzzle.”_

_“Quite original,” Picard said, as the buddy act drew to a close. “How long before a total systems failure?”_

Somewhere as if from afar, Hugh felt his hands clench, fingernails leaving bloody little divots in his palm. Oh yes, he realized what was being discussed here.

Why had Picard chosen to show him this?

And, far more important, why had he not shown him sooner?

Oh, better to let him live in ignorance of _this smoking gun_ , to let him idolize his liberators from afar (ready to be called on when they needed something and not at any other point). Shiny Federation ideals, always just out of reach for the likes of him, but they’d existed in Picard and his crew, or so Hugh had thought, who had overcome their hatred of the Borg and accepted him, for however brief a time, into their midst, without ulterior motive, because from the first, they’d seen a person under the exoplating, a person in need of help.

Yeah, right.

From somewhere to his side, Elnor’s voice cut through the fog. “You have gone very pale, e’lev.”

Seven exhaled through her teeth. “Shit.”

Raffi squeezed her hand and nodded. “You can say that again.”

_“He's not what I expected, Captain,” Geordi was saying on the screen. “He's got feelings. He's homesick. I don't know. It just doesn't seem right using him this way.”_

_Picard replied, “Centuries ago, when laboratory animals were used for experiments, scientists would sometimes become attached to the creatures. This would cause a problem if the experiment involved killing them. I would suggest that you unattach yourself from the Borg, Mr. La Forge.”_

“I don’t have to stand here and watch this,” Hugh said.

He felt their eyes on his back as he left. He didn’t look back. They were probably worried already now, they shouldn’t have to see his unshed tears.

* * *

Elnor found him in their quarters.

“Hugh?” he asked, in that careful approaching-people-in-crisis-voice. “E’lev?”

Hugh had been curled up on the bed – their bed – for the last howevermany minutes, his back to the door. His back was now to Elnor, but he couldn’t dredge up the energy to turn and face him. He knew that he should, that moping like this was probably vaguely ridiculous, but a sizeable part of him didn’t care.

“Hi,” he muttered into the pillow.

“I…” Hugh could hear the rustling of Elnor’s garments as he shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “I am not sure I understood the recording, but it’s plain to see that it upset you. Would you like some company while you’re upset?”

It was such a simple offer. No telling him he should stop and just feel better. Hugh nodded.

“Would you like to explain it to me?” Elnor asked. “You don’t need to. I wish to understand what made you feel this way, I wish to understand what I saw, but if you require it, I will keep my silence.”

Hugh sighed, his face in his hands. “He called me a lab rat, Elnor… that’s all I was to him, a lab rat.”

“I do not know this ‘lab rats’,” Elnor said. Hugh remembered that Elnor didn’t have a UT, he’d simply learned Standard at the monastery. It was remarkably fluent, if a bit old-fashioned, almost ceremonial in the inflection, but there were so many little things unique to the Federation or to Earth that Elnor couldn’t be expected to know.

“Rats are a species of Earth rodentia,” Hugh explained. “We can look at pictures of them on my PADD later. In the distant past, scientists used to experiment on them, way back before holo-simulations. Sometimes the animals would die in the experiments, and sometimes a scientist would feel sorry for that. But not always. That was what the Admiral referred to in regards to me.”

“Why experiment on animals?” Elnor asked. “Just to see what they do?”

“Well, sort of. How they react to substances, different sorts of stimuli… it was just a rat, you see. Not a sentient being. Not a valuable form of life, not like people.”

“I know how important it is for you to be considered… people,” Elnor said. “Which of course you are.”

“You bet.” Hugh let out a choked little laugh. “But that’s not even the worst of it. I understand mistrust towards a single Borg. I understand not being able to believe in drones as people. In those days, no one – excepting Picard himself – had ever been brought back from the Borg. Even now, people are having trouble believing there’s a person stuck in every Borg drone. I get that they had trouble believing it then. And… I know Picard lets his trauma get the better of him sometimes. That’s perfectly understandable, considering. But… justifying genocide?”

“But he did not do it,” Elnor said softly. “They recognized what you were in the end, and reconsidered.”

“They barely changed their plans! They sent me back nonetheless! And they almost succeeded. They would have destroyed the Collective, if the Queen hadn’t been so fast to react. That way, the destruction was limited to one cube – back in Trimatrix 407.” He was beginning to ramble, he noticed, but he couldn’t quite stop himself. “It was horrible. And Commander Riker admitted to me that they had considered this might happen – he didn’t tell me it was what they’d _hoped_ would come to pass. Destroying the Borg! It’s the last thing I ever wanted.”

“Oh,” Elnor said. “But they say your goal is to dismantle the Collective?”

“Dismantle, not destroy,” Hugh told the pillow. “I don’t want to kill even a single drone again. They are my people. Moreso than any Starfleet officer ever was. Every single Borg drone can become a person again, just like me or Seven.”

“You are upset that they were going to kill them all,” Elnor realized.

“ _Upset_ is putting it mildly.” A little silence elapsed as Hugh tried to think of what he felt, why he felt it. “When Picard left you on Vashti – when he stopped visiting – were you ever angry?”

“Oh, yes.” Hugh felt the dip in the mattress as Elnor sat down on the bed. “My anger embittered me for many years. I would not recommend it.” He too was quiet for a while. “But perhaps… there is an appropriate time and place for justified rage.”

“How did you stop being mad?” Hugh asked. “Why did you forgive him?”

“Because…” Elnor made a little humming sound as he considered. “Because I remained fond enough of him. Ah, well… because he was my only chance at getting off of Vashti.”

Absolute Candor. So refreshing.

“Sometimes I feel like Narissa poisoned me when she stabbed me,” Hugh admitted. “From that day on, I’ve felt so angry. And these little things I see just keep making me angrier. I don’t want these feelings. I want to feel at peace with myself again.”

“Anger can lend you strength to fight for what you believe in,” Elnor suggested.

“I was already doing that!” Hugh objected.

He felt Elnor’s hand on his back, so light, so warm, rubbing soothing circles. Little by little, he felt himself relax.

“Perhaps now you will be able to do it even more fervently,” Elnor said.

* * *

Elnor dropped into a meditative trance-like state eventually, but Hugh found he couldn’t sleep. He spent what felt like hours lying on his back, staring up at the ceiling of Elnor’s quarters, longing for his mind to quiet. It didn’t. Too much was churning around in there.

How could Picard have possibly believed that showing him this recording would make things _better_? How was he supposed to face Picard tomorrow? How could he go on in the knowledge that his liberators weren’t the fundamentally altruistic, utterly kind shining examples of humanity he had thought them to be? For so long, he had let their example guide him, inspire him in his work with the xBs, comfort him in moments of doubt. Certainly, the Federation leadership and Starfleet admiralty were filled with pedants, stylus-pushers and conservatives (for if you had achieved paradise, there tended to be a lot to conserve). But it would be alright as long as people like Beverly, Geordi and Picard existed. Right?

Except now…

 _You’re keeping me up,_ Seven grumbled in the shared mindspace, half-asleep with Raffi’s warm body nestled against her.

 _I didn’t mean to, sorry,_ Hugh sent back her way. A moment later, after attempting and failing to make the effort, he had to admit, _I don’t know how to quieten my thoughts right now._

 _We’d hoped Elnor would make you feel better,_ Seven replied. Hugh felt her turn onto her side and curl deeper into her blanket, causing him to now receive twice the comfort than he normally would, his own and hers. It was still not enough.

 _He did! Sort of,_ Hugh claimed. _Well, a little. Look, he’s doing his best._

He felt more than heard Seven sigh. In her own room across the ship, she now sat up, swung her legs out of bed and fished for her clothes in the dark. _Meet you on the holodeck_ _in ten._

Ten minutes later, Hugh entered the holodeck to a scenery he’d never once been in. It was clearly still a room on a starship, recreated here in another room on a slightly more modern starship. Several workstations, perpendicular to one another, took up most of the space. Consoles lined three of the four walls; the fourth was almost entirely taken up by a gigantic, gently sloped viewscreen. Seven stood at one of the workstations, sifting through images to pull up on the viewscreen: star maps, large depictions of stellar phenomena, mostly.

“What is this place?” Hugh asked.

“The old astrometrics lab on Voyager, as it was during the time I travelled with them,” Seven explained. “It might seem strange, but it is the first place I remember ever… feeling comfortable in, past my liberation. You may select something different, of course.”

Hugh shrugged. He could think of a few places he’d found comfort in, places he’d lived before the Artifact, with the Trimatrix 407 bunch. None of them remarkable enough to make it on holo, and he didn’t feel like programming anything tonight. “Here is fine.”

“It’s strange to come back here,” Seven said, fiddling with a console. “It reminds me of Captain Janeway – well, Admiral Janeway, now.”

“Are you back in contact nowadays?”

“Sporadically. I attempted to resume relations after… what happened to Icheb, but I suppose it will never quite be what it was.” Seven cocked her head, pondering or perhaps reminiscing. “Whatever it was.”

Hugh nodded. He knew a part of it, bits and pieces. The situation was quite similar to what had happened to himself and Geordi, he sometimes thought. Freshly liberated xBs tended to imprint on whoever showed them kindness, reaching out for someone to take over in lieu of the hivemind, lost and intimidated by solitude and the utterly alien prospect of self-determination. Along with the cultural values they absorbed, and the rediscovery of their own feelings and impulses…

Hugh had pined for Geordi for a long time, his mind spinning all kinds of romantic, later even sexual scenarios during long, sleepless nights. Later, as maturity settled in, he realized that Geordi would never see him as anything other than an adoptee, and that at best. (A stray he’d plucked up and then let go again. An oddity. The Enterprise had encountered hundreds of oddities.) Hugh also knew that Seven, in the years on Voyager, had felt similarly towards Captain Janeway.

“She once flung herself through a transwarp conduit directly into the Unicomplex to get me back from the Queen,” Seven said.

“You were impressed,” Hugh said softly.

“Yes. That’s not my point. The point is, years later, her in her position of power settled securely on Earth, she wouldn’t do the same for Icheb. Starfleet didn’t launch a rescue mission. The Rangers did that. I did that.”

“I begin to see your point,” Hugh said.

Seven gave an abrupt nod, lips thinning. “Did you know,” she asked, “that Captain Janeway was Borg once, for a very short time?”

Hugh blinked, surprised. “No, I didn’t know that.”

“She was partially assimilated. But no one ever regards this as important, just like people will not commonly look at Picard and think of Locutus first. It is one blip in their extensive careers. They are… people who had an unfortunate run-in with the Borg once. We… are xBs.”

“Where are you going with this?” Hugh asked.

“Sometimes, after coming to Earth, learning about things outside of Voyager, finding the Rangers… sometimes I have found myself almost resenting Admiral Janeway a little, for how she went about mentoring me. She was kind, considerate of my concerns, always willing to listen… but would she have reacted similarly to me, if I was anything other than human? Was I wrong in feeling no particular enthusiasm to grow into specifically a perfect human woman the way the crew wanted me to? Did Seven of Nine have value to them, or only Annika Hansen?”

Hugh chewed his lower lip. Yeah, that was a particular minefield that reclamation therapy had to tread carefully in. The golden rule to go by here was that it had to be left, whenever possible, to the xB. Reconnect with their pre-assimilation identity or forge something new? That couldn’t be decided _for_ a person. But of course, Voyager had had no reclamation specialist on board. The discipline hadn’t been invented yet. Hugh himself at that time had probably been busy getting exoplating sawed off himself, or scraping together latinum for those very same surgeries any old how.

He also remembered how Bjayzl had called Seven ‘Annika’…

“What I mean to say is… look, we watched the rest of those recordings after you left. Your Doctor Crusher and Geordi _were_ kind people. They didn’t have to talk to you or give you a name or call you friend, but they did anyway, original plans notwithstanding. You can hold on to that, if you need to. Those Starfleets, they can be nice. They can be kind. They can do a lot for you. Up to a point. But there are limits somewhere. They can’t understand what it’s like to be in our shoes, and I hope for them that they never will. They’re never going to accept us as fully _of them_ , and I don’t know that many of us even want to be. They’re not perfect, and they’re not going to save us. We can’t rely on them to always come through.” Seven took a deep breath. This was more than Hugh usually heard her say within a whole day. “If we want something done, we’ll have to do it ourselves.”

Hugh raised an eyebrow. “Didn’t you swear off the vigilante life? You’re on Picard’s crew now, doing Picard’s… whole thing…”

“For now.” Seven looked back at him. “And what are _you_ doing?”

* * *

“Only days now before we reach the Earth,” Elnor said.

Hugh sighed and fiddled with a PADD. “Hmmm.”

He was stretched out on Elnor’s bed, reading, for once, for amusement rather than work. He’d told Elnor that it was an Earth book he was reading, by name of _Les Miserables_. Apparently he had fond memories of this text; he and his friends, to hear him tell it, had come into possession of a volume of it shortly after coming to live on Earth. Within their cramped living space, they’d passed a copy around and read aloud to each other.

Since Picard had given Hugh his recording, things had been awkward between Hugh and the La Sirena crew. He spent a lot of time with Seven and spoke to Soji on occasion, but often, Hugh was in their shared quarters. He didn’t avoid anybody, he just also didn’t… go out of his way to seek people out. This seemed unnatural for Hugh. Wasn’t he supposed to be all about making friendships? Elnor was a tad worried. Sometimes, rousing from a meditative trance deep in the night, he would find Hugh rewatching that recording, going over the images again and again…

Elnor shook his head. He needed – they both needed – to get these things out of their minds.

“Yes,” Hugh added, putting the PADD aside as he properly processed Elnor’s words. “Is there anything you’d like to discuss, specifically, regarding that?”

“I would like us to make love,” Elnor said boldly.

He still wasn’t quite sure how, when and how frequently it was appropriate for him to request that. Now that he’d experienced it with Hugh, he found himself hungering for it always. Hugh had but to enter a room, or smile or run a hand through his hair, and desire kindled low in Elnor’s stomach. But, well, when in doubt, he harkened back to Absolute Candor. Certainly, with Hugh, he could discuss his desires frankly.

“What a perfect idea,” Hugh almost purred.

He had come from the shower about thirty minutes ago, his hair still damp. He was wearing nothing but a tank top and underpants (Elnor felt gratified that Hugh would show his body around him so freely, scars and all). Tugging them off him was the work of half a minute.

Elnor meant to undress himself as well, but all thought evaporated from him at the sight of Hugh bare beneath him, the line of his body relaxed, pliant, a smile on his face, his beauteous mismatched eyes sparkling. Invitation was clear in them… and trust. Elnor shivered with delight, his joy permeating him down to the very tips of his toes. _He trusts me._

He leaned down and was met with Hugh’s hands coming up to the sides of his face, cradling his jaw, tugging him down into a kiss. He felt that Hugh was smiling still, into it.

_What an honor to be so trusted by a person such as him!_

Eventually, they broke for air. Elnor’s lips tingled. He was now almost perched on top of Hugh there on their bed, propping himself up on his hands and knees, his arms caging Hugh in. Hugh wrinkled his nose as the tips of Elnor’s hair tickled his face.

“I’m going to sneeze if you don’t stop that,” he warned, still trying and failing not to grin.

Elnor backed up, only a little, just enough to allow him to look down at Hugh fully, appreciate the view. Now, from that recording, he had seen what Hugh had once looked like, younger and completely Borg. Some implants were still there, pared down to minimal, sleek and dark and smoothed with use. Old scars showed where more had been removed. Elnor’s eyes followed those lightning lines, his mind attempting to recreate the likeness of the little drone from the images. It didn’t work. There were worlds between that and his Hugh.

“And what are you looking at?” Hugh asked. His voice was light, but Elnor could recognize by the way a corner of his mouth twitched that perhaps a tendril of insecurity was winding its way in.

“I want to kiss you everywhere,” he said simply.

Hugh shifted below him. “Oh, yes, _please_.”

Elnor set to work. Soon he was marking his path, tracing the lines of every scar, running his tongue along the strangely elegant curves of implants, feeling Hugh below him warm and eager and so inviting. Occasionally he would twitch, when Elnor found somewhere he was sensitive, a little twitch and minute arch into, not away from the sensation which was so very different, about the opposite of a flinch. He made a little noise, almost a whimper, when Elnor nuzzled the implant below his ribcage, he moaned when Elnor sucked at the scar tissue across his left thigh. Hugh’s legs spread open, and Elnor was afforded a gorgeous view of his cock, already most of the way to full hardness.

For a second, Elnor straightened his back and rocked back on the balls of his feet. “I want to kiss you down there.”

“Mmmh…” Hugh sighed. “Yes, please.”

Elnor began with a kiss to Hugh’s inner thigh (solid muscle underneath soft skin) and got a pleased sigh from Hugh. In his periphery he saw one of Hugh’s hands slide lower, evidently to touch himself.

“Not yet,” Elnor said, looking up. “I… would like us to take our time, if that’s alright with you.”

Hugh lowered his hand onto the bedsheet. “That’s… okay.”

Elnor bent his head again, back to his task. The next kiss he pressed softly into the little patch of dark hair just above the root of Hugh’s cock. Then, almost reverently, he trailed his lips up the shaft, as though it were one of the osol twists they’d sold in the town square at Vashti (the sweet and the bitter of it). He wanted to commit the taste to memory, never be without it again. Soon they would reach Earth, and then he wouldn’t get to taste his love for… no one knew how long. There would not be much time to catalogue these sensations, or try new things.

Elnor wanted to make the best of the time they had.

He licked a trail back down Hugh’s length, along the soft little stretch of skin below the balls, down to his hole. He heard Hugh gasp.

He detached for a moment. “I want to kiss you right here.”

It got him a shuddery breath from Hugh. “Ooh… if you… that’s… yes, do it, yes.”

He already sounded wrecked. Elnor smiled.

He applied his lips again, tongueing the rim of Hugh’s hole. Surely – ah, yes – he could find his way inside… just so. Slowly, his tongue slid deeper, into tight soft heat…

“A-ah… Elnor… _Elnor_ …”

He realized Hugh was trying to get his attention, and withdrew to kneel between Hugh’s legs. “Yes, my _e’lev?”_

“We need to replicate some lube.”

It caught Elnor by surprise. “For… this?” He gestured downwards.

“I’d like you to – if you want – I’d like you to…” For a moment, Hugh halted, a miniscule stumble over his words. He met Elnor’s eyes almost shyly. “Fuck me.”

Oh, it took Elnor’s breath away. “I want – yes – but I’m not sure how, I… I don’t want to hurt you…”

“You’ll be fine. I’m sure… I trust you. We can do this.”

“It might not be… good. Since I don’t know how.”

Hugh propped himself up on one elbow and reached out a hand to gently caress Elnor’s face, rubbing a thumb along his cheekbone. “It’ll be fine. I’ll show you what you need to do. Let me up, now, love.”

Elnor stayed on the bed and watched as Hugh padded to the replicator across the room. He wondered idly which member of the crew had requested for Captain Rios to add lubricant to his replicator menu, seeing as the Captain himself had seemed way too busy with brooding to get up to much, up until life had thrown him Doctor Jurati’s way. Seven, perhaps? He tried to imagine the stern Fenris Ranger making such a request and almost giggled.

Hugh returned to the bed with a small bottle in hand. Now it was Elnor’s turn to shift uncertainly on the bed.

“Stay down,” Hugh murmured, taking Elnor’s hand. “You have such graceful fingers. I’d like you to prep me.”

“How?” Elnor asked, completely lost, but eager.

“Watch me for now.” Hugh popped the cap of the tiny bottle, squeezed some clear, viscous substance onto his fingers and spread his legs. Elnor saw him squint in concentration as he worked himself open, movements practiced but, it seemed to Elnor, somewhat impatient, like Hugh was just as eager to get to the point as he. 

Elnor reached for the lube himself now, suddenly emboldened. Maybe he was just now registering how very hard he was, how very much he needed this to progress. “May I?”

Hugh nodded. Elnor spread some lube onto his fingers and set to work, trying to mimic what he’d seen Hugh do to himself. It was a peculiar sensation, the slide of his fingers, in and out like that. The soft give of Hugh here, the heat of him. How good this would feel on his cock, Elnor thought, now almost delirious with need, using his free hand to grasp himself roughly through the fabric of the pants he somehow still had on. Had to relieve that pressure somehow. He felt wound tight, spring-like.

Hugh was beginning to arch a little with Elnor’s increasingly sure and rhythmic strokes, meeting him halfway. At some point, Elnor’s fingers found a special spot that seemed to feel more pleasurable than the others, because his breath hitched and he murmured, “Yes, right there… keep that up.”

So Elnor began teasing that spot, massaging it gently but steadily, increasing the pressure by tiny bits as Hugh was reduced to gasping for more. He was coming apart now a little, and Elnor leaned closer, mesmerized, enraptured. Every stroke sent jolts of pleasure-pain to his own tight crotch and Elnor couldn’t suppress a groan. Hugh looked up at him, his eyes glazed, half-hidden by his lashes.

“You should undress,” he said.

Elnor didn’t need telling twice. He shucked his robe, pants and underwear in record time, barely wanting to detach and get out of bed, but deeming it necessary to continue procedures. This done, he knelt on the bed between Hugh’s legs, grasping himself at his base.

“So now do I…?”

“Wait, wait.” Hugh nudged his shoulder. “Lie down. Let me on top.”

Somehow, Elnor found this thrilling. He settled down on the soft white bedsheets, one hand still grasping his upright cock. Hugh, for lack of a better expression, mounted him, kneeling with his thighs to both sides of Elnor’s hips.

“Right. Now let me just…”

He too touched Elnor’s cock, lathering it with a generous palmful of lube as Elnor keened and whined and tried not to tremble – “Hold still,” Hugh said and began to lower himself – down…

Elnor moaned and did tremble as his tip and then more of him was enveloped in that tight, delicious heat. “You feel… so wonderful, you’re giving me so much…”

Hugh laughed a little. “Giving? Are you kidding? This is amazing for me too… is it almost all in?”

“About half, my love.” Elnor grinned.

“You Romulans. Giving me a lot to work with.” With a shaky exhale of breath, Hugh lowered himself further, until Elnor’s cock was buried to the hilt in him. Elnor tried to give him a moment, but he really needed more, needed to move, somehow, _something_ …

“Hold on,” Hugh muttered. “Not as young as I used to be.” Slowly, he rose again, and Elnor had to clench his fists into the sheets – the sweet drag of it, beautiful… and oh, he was coming down again… repeating this, setting a pace, matching the stuttering movements of Elnor’s hips to his… he had him, guided him, commanded him, it was heaven.

“Yes… good,” Elnor gasped, breath coming in short puffs now, “You… in control, you have me, so... splendid, so gorgeous, _idh verelan_ …” His Standard was eluding him, slipping, along with many things...

“Ah,” Hugh stilled for a moment. “I… can I ask you a little favor?”

 _Goddess_ , Elnor was wound so tight. Molten heat pooling at his core. He would tear the universe apart if Hugh but asked. “Anything.”

Hugh took his hands again. “Will you…? I have a couple of access ports at the small of my back, embedded in my spine. Will you touch them for me?”

“Of course… wait, what will happen?”

Hugh shook his head. “If you just touch it with your hand? Nothing. I just thought it might… feel nice.”

So Elnor trailed his hands up Hugh’s thighs, around and along his spine, where his fingertips soon met warmed metal. It wasn’t something he would have expected, but it was evidently normal for Hugh, so Elnor decided it was going to be normal for him too. Still curious, he let his fingers explore the area, the way these… access ports, Hugh had called them – were embedded among the notches of his spine. Encased within the three rings of metal, there were little openings, probably meant to plug something in. Elnor caressed the skin around the implant, scarred and beautiful, then plunged a finger inside.

Hugh twitched and clenched around Elnor’s cock as he ground down, so hard Elnor was seeing stars. “Yes… mnngh… do that again.”

“If it pleases you,” Elnor said softly, and hooked another finger inside. Hugh rewarded him with another snap of his hips, speeding up his pace now, fucking himself on Elnor’s cock. He was touching himself now as well, stroking his cock with his free hand that didn’t grip the headboard of their bed for purchase. What could Elnor do but hold on to Hugh’s waist, both of his thumbs still hooked into his spinal port, and hold on as he arched into each of Hugh’s downward thrusts? He was not in control and it felt amazing. He was here for Hugh to chase his relief, he would give all pleasure to his charge that he was able to give, he was a steadfast Qalankhai, he was—

Elnor came with a howl, in one sudden gushing burst, too overwhelmed with sensation to have even felt himself approaching his crest. He emptied into Hugh, making Hugh toss his head back and moan and speed up his hand even further, until he spent as well, cum dribbling down his length and dripping onto Elnor’s thighs and stomach and the surrounding bedsheets.

Hugh took a moment to collect himself before he clambered off Elnor and slumped, apparently rendered boneless by satisfaction, down onto the bed by his side. Elnor looked at him and smiled, a golden, blissful lassitude fogging his mind, and got an equally content smile back. Hugh nestled into Elnor’s side and for a moment, there was nothing but this shared hazy satisfaction.

His senses returned to him in a gentle ebb. He found he felt deeply, contentedly tired, the way one tires after a long training session or an afternoon of hard but rewarding labor. A part of him wanted to go to sleep. Lazily, without really thinking, he trailed a finger through the drying mess on his thighs and stomach, scooped some up and experimentally licked it. Next to him, Hugh drew a sharp breath.

“Don’t _do_ that,” he chastised. “Makes me want to go again, and that’s not happening anymore.”

“We should clean,” Elnor said.

Hugh groaned and did not make any attempts to move (he had to be… _leaking_ ) so Elnor decided it was up to him.

 _I take care of my charge,_ he thought proudly as he heaved himself upwards and made for the bathroom to fetch a washcloth.

* * *

“Here it is,” Enoch the ENH announced grandly from OPS, gesturing at the frontal viewscreen. “The Earth!”

“So beautiful,” Agnes Jurati breathed and turned to Elnor. “I never get tired of looking at it, do you?”

Elnor shrugged mutely. Yes, the Earth looked striking out there. It was touching how the humans on board silently turned towards the view and basked, even Picard, Raffi and Rios, who had to have seen it countless times. They were hearing the siren song of home. But it wasn’t Elnor’s homeworld. (For a moment he wondered if he would feel a similar level of awe looking down at Vashti, or if he’d never feel this way. He would never look upon Rom’lass again.)

Seven regarded the view stoically. Soji cocked her head, then turned away and gave Elnor a crooked smile. “It’s strange,” she said quietly. “I have so many memories that insist that this is home. That I grew up here with my mom, dad and sister. That I went to school here, then college… but it’s not true. I was born on Coppelius three years ago. I was never here. Dahj was, but never me.”

“You feel ambivalent about the Earth.” Elnor didn’t quite know what else to say. He felt ambivalent too. A part of him wanted to go down and explore more of the planet. A part of him hated this place, because it meant saying goodbye.

* * *

“And you are sure you’ve packed everything you need?”

“Elnor, I have packed my bags already on Coppelius. It’s fine. And you, have you set up that subspace frequency?”

“Seven helped me with it. You can call me whenever you like.”

“I will.”

“Do you promise?”

Elnor was not making it easy to walk away here. Every step of the way from his quarters – that had, for a short time, been _their_ quarters – to the transporter pad, he was glued to Hugh’s side.

Hugh looked up at Elnor, grasping his hand between both of his own. “I promise I will call you. Every day if you want me to. And we’ll see each other again soon, alright?”

Elnor held on, almost a little desperate. With what Hugh now knew of him… well, he could recognize abandonment issues when they stared him in the face. “How soon?” Elnor asked.

“We can discuss that once I’ve got my things in order down on Earth,” Hugh said. “Once I know where I’m going next.”

Elnor nodded, emotion starkly apparent on his face. “I do not like this at all,” he said. “But I will respect your wishes. And we’ll meet again soon.”

It was as much a request for reassurance as it was a statement of intent. Hugh smiled and nodded. “I already can’t wait.”

Elnor reached up behind him, and for a confusing moment, Hugh thought he was going to draw his sword for some reason. But Elnor tugged on the blue ribbon in his hair until it came loose, then took Hugh’s hand and tied it carefully around his wrist.

“This is my vow to you,” he said. “I _am_ your Qalankhai. No amount of distance between us will change that.”

Hugh raised his wrist – coincidentally, it was the right one, where the wrist port wasn’t – and admired the view. “Isn’t it usually the other way around? The knight going into battle receives a token of affection from their lady? I’m… afraid I don’t know what kind of memento to give you.” On further thought, he really should’ve considered that.

Elnor took his hands again. “Give me a kiss. It will sustain me.” For a second, he paused as if evaluating the veracity of his statement to himself. Then, resolute, he nodded. “It must.”

He was so sweet. It was so hard to step away.

The crew had come to the transporter pad to say goodbye. Hugh hugged Seven and Soji, exchanged some warm words with Raffi – “Take good care of my sister” – and shook hands with the rest. Picard got a cursory nod.

“If there is any way that I can be of assistance in the future, do not hesitate to ask,” the Admiral said.

Hugh put on a smile. “The Reclamation Project appreciates the offer.” _Put your latinum where your mouth is, old man. If you want me to forgive you for using me as a weapon of genocide, and for getting my xBs killed, you will advocate for my people._

“Ready to transport,” Captain Rios said. “Pleasure to have you on board.”

 _Your holograms will unionize within a week._ “The pleasure was all mine, Captain.”

Hugh kissed Elnor one more time. He closed his eyes, and simply felt Elnor’s embrace, nuzzled into his shoulder and felt the warmth of his body, inhaled his fresh, clean scent. _I already miss you._

He stepped on the transporter pad, smiled at everyone and raised a hand to wave. If he looked at Elnor’s large, longing eyes for one more second he might reconsider, throw his life, his goals, his obligations to his people out the airlock and stay here as Elnor’s kept Borg. For a moment, this sounded enticing.

When he felt himself disintegrate, it was as if a tiny piece of him didn’t transport with him, but stayed there in Elnor’s safekeeping.

The transport obligingly plonked him down right into San Francisco, but still quite a ways from home. He hadn’t specified an exact location within the city, so Rios had, ironically enough, chosen Federation Drive right up front of Starfleet headquarters. In the usual bustle, no one cared much for anyone dropping in via transporter beam. La Sirena was in high orbit, with absolutely no way for even a Borg ocular implant to spot it from here, but for a second, Hugh had to stand and gaze upwards, to where that tiny piece of him still dwelled.

Eventually he shook his head and sighed and got on with it.

Peering at the Starfleet HQ building with the usual slew of mixed feelings, Hugh lifted his shoulder bag and made his way to the nearest transit station to catch a shuttle home.

* * *

The old apartment had changed surprisingly little since half the group had moved out, apart for the fact that it was now completely empty of people. Ada’s paintings were still all over the walls, the furniture unmoved, the kitchenette was still tiny and dinky, the replicator still the same ancient, error-prone thing, even Six’s ashtray, now clean of his cigarettes, stood perched on the uncomfortable plastic chair out on the small balcony with the same eternal peeling paint on its iron railing. The large banner proclaiming “XB NATION” still greeted Hugh right beyond the front door. If he peered down at the small patch of lawn behind the building, Hugh thought he might even still see that plastic kiddie pool Ley had lugged out there one summer for all of them to soak in. All the smells of home were there, but still, lifeless. Like the smell of a piece of pizza left out to grow cold.

Here they had all lived, for a few years, their first place on Earth. Only when Hugh had gone to the Neutral Zone to work on the Artifact, and Ley and Six had taken off to tour with the band, had they split up, leaving the place to Ada and Cal. It was very much Federation basic income, but at least they hadn’t had to live apart from each other. It was a tiny, cramped affair for six people, but very large, Hugh realized, for one.

And he was alone.

When was the last time he’d been totally alone, the voices of the others so very distant as to almost not be there at all? Lately, Elnor at the very least had almost always been around. On the Artifact, there had always been his others, the xBs under his care. Before that, he’d been here with the 407 group. Before that… well.

Huh.

The silence was very strange, especially since Hugh had never experienced this place silent. When there hadn’t been music or the Federation newsreel on, there had been their usual cacophony of sound: Ada humming to herself as she painted, Six plucking on his guitar, Ley’s vocal training, even Cal in his room on subspace with his clients. The hum of the one alcove that they’d crammed in one of the bedrooms – Ellie’s – and that they all used for their more or less bimonthly regeneration sessions. The subtle _woosh_ of Cal’s hoverchair zipping through the air. A constant, gentle stream of mind-link bickering, subsumed with mutual love.

Now the silence was deafening.

Hugh put his bag down on the lumpy blue couch in what passed for the kitchen-slash-living-area. He replicated dinner – the replicator still required the exact same manner of percussive maintenance to spit out a plate of Pad Thai. He sat and ate on that same couch while the silence gnawed at his mind. Individuality was great and all, but alone-with-his-thoughts was still not a state Hugh liked being in.

Lately, there had been so much to do, so much to see, so many ways to keep busy. Now it was him, his thoughts, and the empty apartment. Without any shiny distractions, the events of the past weeks filtered back in.

Picard’s recording. La Sirena. Elnor. Talking to Seven again. Seeing Beverly and Geordi. Making up with the 407s. Coppelius. The Synths. The Artifact.

The massacre.

The high-pitched whir of the disruptor: a soulless sound. Narissa’s hand in his hair, yanking backwards, cruel… the bodies of his xBs on the ground, discarded like garbage, like something worthless. Those poor sweet innocent souls, snuffed out before his very eyes.

The voices. The voices in his mind.

_We are afraid._

_Director? What is happening?_

_Have we done something to anger the guards?_

_Director? You will tell them it is not our fault, won’t you?_

_We meant no harm…_

_What are these question they are asking? Why are we here?_

_Director?_

And then the silence.

Hugh heard somebody whimper. It could only be him. He pressed his hands to his ears which of course didn’t keep the voices out… it trapped them in there with him.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered into the empty air. “I’m sorry, I couldn’t… I’m so, so sorry.”

And here, in the empty apartment, far away from prying eyes, far away from people who needed him to function, who worried if he wasn’t at his best, he could finally cry. He could finally feel his own, private grief for his people, his poor vulnerable people, whom he would have loved every step of the way on their path to rediscovering their selfhoods, whoever they would have been. So Hugh curled up on the lumpy blue couch that still smelled faintly of his friends, and let the tears fall for a while.

When said tears stopped flowing and his breath evened out, it only brought him back to the same empty, lonely space as before. He had the whole night ahead of him and no idea what to do with it. There were two documents on the PADD in his bag: one communiqué from the Federation Council, and a referral by Beverly. Hugh could do nothing about any of these right now.

He got up and cautiously made his way to his old bedroom.

He didn't know what he’d expected. Dust and grime? Everyone to have stored their trash here? The room hadn’t changed much since he’d gone away. Someone had even at least cursorily kept it clean by wiping down all the surfaces and sweeping the floor. Either they’d kept it the way he’d left it for the sizeable number of years he’d been away, or they’d restored the room to its original state recently before they’d left for Coppelius in the hopes that they’d make up and get him to return. For a moment, Hugh felt a rush of fondness for his friends.

The most noticeable change was that the regeneration alcove lived here now, leaned against the wall opposite the small desk. Ellie had probably wanted the space in her room. Other than that, it was unchanged: the desk, a shelf with knick-knacks, PADDs and a few paper books, the bed and nightstand, a few fading posters on the walls. The bed smelled unaired and unused when Hugh stretched out on it.

Was he just going to sleep here alone? With his grief and most likely his nightmares? How quickly he’d become used to sharing his bed with a partner. What was he to do with this fierce, sudden loneliness? Oh, there were ways to numb it – numb everything for a night. Nanoprobes could by nature synthesize anything a body needed, and some clever xBs had found out some years prior that there were ways to trick them into synthesizing any substance a body might want on demand. Word had gotten around and hey presto, the xB community had a nanoprobe abuse problem. Quick, cheap manufacture of illegal intoxicants were one reason why Borg implants and nanoprobes were so sought after on the black market. Hugh had stayed away from that mostly, but right now…

No. He shook his head. Not a coping mechanism he’d recommend to a patient. He himself didn’t adhere to different rules, did he?

He looked down at his hands, folded in his lap, and caught a flash of color. Oh, right, Elnor’s blue ribbon…

He didn’t have to tough it out alone.

“Computer?” The beeping noise with which it responded was an octave lower than the usual Federation computer sound, denoting how worn this unit was. (Who made all these computers? Who controlled the flow of data?) “Call the following subspace frequency…”

* * *

Site-to-site transport took him across the globe quite easily. The following day found Hugh stepping into an office space of the kind that managed to look light, bright and airy without seeming sterile or unfriendly. A large, cream-white carpet, cozy-looking armchairs with linen upholstery in the same color, light wood paneling on parts of the walls up to chest-height and a few strategically placed throw-pillows gave the place just that bit of a relaxed air. On the glass tabletop between the two armchairs sat a carafe of water, some teabags, two PADDs and styluses and a large, foreboding packet of tissues. Someone had clearly gotten started here with certain ideas on how these types of offices had to look like. It was tasteful. Thinking back on the conditions he’d had to work in at the Artifact, Hugh felt a sting of envy. The average patient was probably put at ease by this environment, but being as he was used to Borg cube lighting and also clashing with the surroundings due to his black-on-black dressing habits, Hugh just felt out of place.

The woman who greeted him was petite, dark-haired, approximately his own age, and going by her spots she was a Trill. Beverly didn’t know her personally but had recommended her on a friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend-basis. By reputation, she was the kind of counsellor who didn’t shy away from difficult cases, with nearly twenty years of Starfleet service under her belt and the 300 years of life experience of an adventurous symbiont to guide her.

She got up and shook Hugh’s hand with that practiced, warm therapist smile. “Hi,” she said, “I’m glad you found your way here alright. I’m Ezri Dax, if you like, you can just call me Ezri.”

Hugh gave her his own warm therapist smile back. “Hugh. No other name.”

“Yes, I must admit I looked you up a bit when Worf’s friends mentioned you to me. Borg rehabilitation therapy, huh? I like working with a colleague. I’m going to get some fascinating stories out of you, I can tell. Please, sit down.”

Hugh sat in one of the armchairs. This was strange. He hadn’t been on the receiving end of a therapy session in a long time. He’d been provided counsel upon entering the Federation and applying for citizenship, which had been, as far as he was concerned, an unmitigated disaster. He’d gone in hopeful, only to realize that the objective here wasn’t so much alleviating his psychological stresses but to gauge if he was fit to be a Federation citizen without his Borg affiliation causing a threat to their perfect society. (“We are here to help you on your journey towards discovering your _humanity_. We want to make it easy for you to learn _human_ behaviors. Are you really committed to becoming more _human?”_ ) He’d pledged to do better by those that came after him, and hadn’t entered into therapy for himself ever again.

“Right,” Ezri said, taking up one of the PADDs on the table. “You took the time to fill in my little questionnaire, thank you for that – you were saying here that you’re coming in for mainly post-traumatic stress. If that’s okay, could you maybe specify a bit what exactly you’d like me to help you with?”

Hugh took a deep breath and told himself to trust.

“Well,” he said, “Where do I even start?”

* * *

He saw Ezri once a week.

It remained strange to be the person on the proverbial couch. Intellectually, he’d always known that there were no quick fixes for issues that were ingrained that deeply (there had never been quick fixes for his patients, why should there be for him?). That he probably wouldn’t get away with a few quick sessions of post-trauma counselling to get over the events on the Artifact. That after just a little prodding, Ezri as a reasonably competent professional would find that the problems went deeper and further back in Hugh’s history than the Artifact. And it was reasonable, wasn’t it, to start rolling those stones over as well, now that he had the time? But somehow, an entirely unreasonable part of himself had hoped that somehow, things would be different for him than they’d been for every single patient he’d ever had. Yet still he persevered, and continued showing up for the appointments, even as he grew suspicious that some of the things to be unearthed here were not going to be things he’d like to hear.

(“I feel like lately I’ve had trouble managing my emotions the way I should,” he told her one day. “Since those things happened on the Artifact, I’ve felt so… angry a lot of the time. That can’t be normal.”

“Anger at something unjust happening to you, especially on such a scale, seems justified to me,” Ezri said, idly tapping her stylus against the edge of her PADD.

“But I’ve had some… outbursts. I snapped at people when I didn’t mean to. It’s untenable. In my position… well, I’m supposed to be diplomatic. I’ve always been able to control myself in the past.”

Ezri had him describe instances that he could recall when his fuse had proved shorter than it ought to be. The argument with Picard by the lake, when he’d accidentally been snippy towards Ramdha, even when he’d punched a man. “I agree that escalating a situation isn’t what we should be doing,” she said. “I probably don’t need to be telling you about mindfulness techniques to employ when someone provokes you. We can still practice that together, as a refresher for you, but you know that stuff. What I’d like to know for now is, what would you say is different from how you dealt with situations like these in the past? When someone would say something insensitive or insulting to you in the past, how did you react?”

Hugh shrugged. “I just sort of… ignored it? Well, I took it in, I guess. I wasn’t really in a position that would allow me to react.”

“What if you had just calmly argued your point?”

“Oh, no. That would be misconstrued as lashing out, or attempting to push pro-Borg ideologies. My welfare and that of my charges would usually be dependent on keeping my head down.”

“We’re talking about a perfectly civil debate.”

“You must not know what life is like for an xB.”

Ezri ceased her tapping for a moment. “I… don’t,” she said. “I can’t begin to imagine. But I think I’m starting to see… it sounds like you had a lot of these kinds of frustrating moments?”

“It’s an occupational hazard,” Hugh said.

“And how would these moments make you feel?” Ezri asked. “If you had to put a name to it.”

Hugh cocked his head towards the ceiling as he searched his index of emotion-descriptors. “Resigned,” was what he settled for.

“Hmm,” Ezri said. “And in what ways did you deal with that resignation?”

Now, with this, Hugh found he was coming up empty. “Elaborate,” he requested.

“Well, what was your outlet? How did you vent? Did you talk through it with a loved one…?”

“I would never burden my friends with my problems that they can do nothing about.”

“…or maybe keep a journal…?”

“Impossible. The Tal Shiar went through everything. Well, I suppose I did not ‘vent’. It doesn’t seem like something that’s prudent to do.”

“I’m assuming as an xB you experienced a lot of misaimed prejudice towards yourself and your patients.”

Hugh gave her a thin smile. “That’s certainly one way to put it.”

“So to sum up, basically since you left the Borg Collective, you have had to work under constant pressure, with no outlets to speak of, subject to constant systemic and interpersonal abuse, which recently has escalated into having to witness senseless bigotry-motivated mass murder and getting physically stabbed and almost dying. Would you not say that a certain anger at this state of things would be a natural feeling to have?”

 _Natural_. Hugh frowned. When she said it like that, it did ring true. But _getting angry_ was alright for people like Six or Ley who could just yell into a microphone about it to instrumental accompaniment and be perceived as subversive and punk for it. People, in short, who didn’t bear Hugh’s responsibilities. “Maybe so, but I should still be able to control myself,” he said. “I can’t afford to not do that. There’s more at stake than just me.”

“I do feel I need to reemphasize the constant pressure.” Ezri started tapping again. “A body can only bear a limited amount of stress. It seems like you’ve been pushing your limits for a long time, and getting stabbed was probably what constituted the last straw. You cross a line past which you can’t go on anymore, and things will start to deteriorate.”

Hugh frowned deeper. He had, of course, learned all these things in his studies of psychology. Nothing about this was new to him. But when it came to his own life… there was simply always so much to do. Of course he’d made the conscious decision at some point – and then kept making that decision over and over – to put his own mental health towards the back of the list of priorities. He’d never planned for the contingency of a mental breakdown. He’d always just reckoned he’d muddle through somehow. “I can’t let any of that get to me,” he insisted. “And I can’t let on. I’m supposed to be the leader. That’s all I was ever supposed to be, from the moment Captain Picard told me so.”

The elegant curve of Ezri’s lips had flattened into an ill-boding line. “I’m going to be honest with you,” she said. “We’re going to be here a while.”)

Apart from the therapy sessions, Hugh suddenly had a lot of time on his hands. He talked to people on subspace a lot. He took long walks. He started journaling per Ezri’s recommendation. Often he considered trying houseplants again or getting some kind of pet. He waited.

Three weeks into this, a missive arrived from a subcommittee of a subcommittee of the Starfleet Diplomatic Corps, one that Hugh had dealt with before. An admiral wished to meet with him, about a potential opportunity for the Borg Reclamation Project. The communication asked politely but firmly that he maintain discretion regarding this development.

Finally.

It seemed he had his new task.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well folks, this is where this fic ends, but the story's far from over. I've decided to make this a series, and will be dropping part 2 very soon for y'all to enjoy.


End file.
